Léon Degrelle - Hitler Democrat-The Barnes Review (2012)

978-1-937787-11 - 0 Manufactured in the U.S.A.
rool THE BARNES REVIEW

P.O. Box 15877. Washington. D.C. 20003
www.BarnesReview.com
1-877-773-9077 toll tree
THE BARNES REVIEW
https ://bamesreview.org/product/hitler-democrat/
HITLER
C
A SPECIAL DEDICATION
FROM THE PUBLISHER
This collection of the writings of the late General Leon Degrelle

could never have survived the sordid conspiracy to destroy
Degrelle's legacy (described in these pages) had it not been for the
dedication and loyalty of his widow, Madame Jeanne Degrelle, who
worked closely with me and other supporters at THE BARNES REVIEW
t.o rescue the general's wri~ from a very real historical holocaust
in which they were intended t.o perish. It is Mme. Degrelle, there-
fore, to whom this volume is so appropriately dedicated.
-WIWSA CARTO
TBR Publisher/Editor
June 2012
By GENERAL LEON DEGRELLE
THE BARNES REVIEW

HITLER DEMOCRAT
B)' GEN. LEON DEGREUE
ISBN 978-1-937787-11-0
Published by:
THE BARNES REVIEW
P.O. Box 15877
Washington, D.C. 20003
www.bamesreview.com
l-877-773-9077-to11 free ordering line
Copyright 2012 by THE BARNES REVIEW. Al1 rights reserved.
Ordering more copies:
Order more copies of HITI.ER DEMOCRAT (softcover, 546 pages, $35 minus 10%
forTBR readers plus $5 S&H) from T1 mBARNt~ R1M1~, P.O. Box 15877, Washington,
D.C. 20003. TBR subscribers may take 100/4 off the list price. Call TBR toll free at
1-877-773-9077 to charge copies to Visa, MasterCard, AmEx or Discover. See more
products online at www.bamesreview.com.
Subscriptions:
A subscription to TI m BARNE.Ii R1N11~ historical magazine is $46 for one year (six
issues) and $78 for two years (12 issues) inside the U.S. Outside the U.S:
Canada/Mexico: $65 per year. All other nations: $80 per year sent via air mail. Send
payment with request to TBR, P.O. Box 15877, Washington, D.C. 20003. Call TBR toll
free at 1-877-773-9077 to charge to major credit cards. See also bamesreview.com. See
a special subscription offer at the back of this volume or call the toll free number
above and ask for best current subscription offer.
Reproduction Policy:
Shon ponions of this book may be reproduced without prior permission in critical
reviews and other papers if credit is given to author, full book title is listed and full
contact information and subscription information are given for publisher as shown
above. No other reproduction of any portion of this book is allowed without per-
mission.
Front cover: Shown on the front cover is a throng of supponers greeting Adolf Hitler
on May 18, 1933 in Berlin. Credit: ZUMA Press/Newscom.
Back cover: Cen. Leon Degrelle of the Belgian Waffen-SS in uniform, circa 1990.
HITLER DEMOCRAT
TABLE OF CONTENTS
INTRODUCTION: Leon Degrelle-Warrior for the West .................... 7

CHAPTER 1: The Enigma of Hitler ...................................................... 21
CHAPTER 2: Hitler-The Unknown Soldier ....................................... 31
CHAPTER 3: Lessons from the Front .................................................. 41
CHAPTER 4: The Debacle .................................................................... 51
CHAPTER 5: A Treaty of Usurers ........................................................ 57
CHAPTER 6: Seven and a Half Marks .................................................. 63
CHAPTER 7: Ein Fuehrer ..................................................................... 69
CHAPTER 8: Hitler's Three Chances ................................................... 79
CHAPTER 9: The Liquidation of the Parties ....................................... 87
CHAPTER 10: Who Would End the Bankruptcy? ............................... 93
CHAPTER 11: Unification of the State .............................................. 103
CHAPTER 12: Unification of the Labor Unions ................................ 119
CHAPTER 13: Where to Find the Billions ......................................... 127
CHAPTER 14: Hitler's Social Revolution .......................................... 139
CHAPTER 15: Conquest by Captivation ............................................ 153
CHAPTER 16: The Poles of the Ruhr ................................................ 163
CHAPTER 17: Hitler's Emphatic "No" ............................................... 169
CHAPTER 18: Military Unification .................................................... 177
CHAPTER 19: Territorial Unification ................................................ 183
4 I TABLE OF CONTENTS
CHAPTER 20: Plebiscite in the Saarland .......................................... 191

CHAPTER 21: The Saarland Votes to Join Gennany ........................ 199
CHAPTER 22: The Anglo-Gern1an Naval Treaty ............................... 209
CHAPTER 23: A Great Missed Opportunity ...................................... 217
CHAPTER 24: England Moves Toward War ...................................... 225
CHAPTER 25: France Plays With Fire ............................................... 235
CHAPTER 26: A Tale of Two Pacts .................................................... 243
CHAPTER 27: Authority and Power .................................................. 253
CHAPTER 28: Events Leading Up to the Beer Hall Putsch ............. 267
CHAPTER 29: Hitler's Putsch of Nov. 9, 1923 ................................... 273
CHAPTER 30: The End of Hitler's Would-Be Revolution ................. 287
CHAPTER 31: Hitler Goes on Trial for Treason ............................... 297
CHAPTER 32: The Trapsetters of Geneva ........................................ 311
CHAPTER 33: An American at the 1932 Geneva Conference .......... 319
CHAPTER 34: Burial at the League of Nations ................................. 327
CHAPTER 35: Adolf Hitler's Strategy ................................................ 337
CHAPTER 36: The Annies of the People .......................................... 345
CHAPTER 37: The Case of Paris 1934 ............................................... 353
CHAPTER 38: The Civil War in the National Socialist Party ........... 367
CHAPTER 39: Roehm Continues to Push ......................................... 375
CHAPTER 40: The Roehm Crisis Worsens ........................................ 381
CHAPTER 41: The Last Millimeters of the Fuse ............................... 389
CHAPTER 42: The Night of the Long Knives .................................... 397
CHAPTER 43: A Landslide Victory for Hitler .................................... 413
TABLE OF CONTENTS I 5
CHAPTER 44: The Challenge to French Marxism ............................ 423

CHAPTER 45: Return to the Rhineland ............................................. 433
CHAPTER 46: The London-Paris Disagreement ............................... 443
CHAPTER 47: II Duce Drops in on the Fuehrer ............................... 451
CHAPTER 48: Leon Blum-Collector of Fascis1ns .......................... 465
CHAPTER 49: Hitler and Tukhachevsky ........................................... 475
CHAPTER 50: Revolutionizing Warfare ............................................ 491
CHAPTER 51: Hitler and the Olyn1pics ............................................. 503
CHAPTER 52: The World Visits Hitler ............................................... 509
CHAPTER 53: Nure1nberg in the National Socialist Mind ............... 517
DEGRELLE PHOTO SECTION ....................................................... 527
INDEX: .................................................................................................. 539
Adolf Hitler salutes the workers at the Zeppelin field as he prepares to speak at
Nuremberg on Reichs Party Day, September 1935. This rally for freedom cele-
brated the renewal of the German military and the liberation of Germany from the
Versailles Treaty. ALBUMJNewscowAPAPHOTOS339632
INTRODUCTION
lEON DEGREllE:
WARRIOR FOR THE WEST
BY MICHAEL COLLINS PIPER
Here is the inspiring yet tragic story of an idealistic, in-

domitable andfearless leader who survived the worst that World
War II had to offer, only to be struck down by treason in the twi-
light of his life.
eon Degrelle died in Malaga, Spain on April 1, 1994 at the age of

87. Before World War II, Degrelle had been Europe's youngest
political leader and the founder of the Rexist Party of Belgium.
During the war he was a hero on the Eastern Front, fighting to
save Europe from Communism. As statesman and soldier, he
was acquainted with Hitler, Mussolini, Churchill, Franco, Laval, Petain and
many other European leaders during the titanic ideological and military
clash that was World War II. Alone among them, he survived across nearly
five decades to remain a personal witness of that historical period.
Degrelle was born to a family of French origin in the small Ardennes
town of Bouillon in Luxembourg on June 15, 1906. He was the son of a
prosperous brewer who had immigrated to Luxembourg from France five
years earlier, provoked by a French "anti-clerical" government's expulsion
of the Jesuit order. It was said so many of the Degrelles had become Jesuit
priests that the Degrelles were "Jesuits from father to son."
Young Leon studied at the University of Louvain, where he acquired a
doctorate in law, but he also immersed himself in other academic disci-
plines such as political science, art, archeology and philosophy. As a stu-
dent, his natural gift of leadership became apparent. By the time he
8 I HITLER DEMOCRAT
reached 20 the young prodigy had already published five books and oper-
ated his own weekly newspaper.
Out of his deep Cluistian conviction, Degrellejoined Belgiu1n's Catholic
Action Movement and, naturally, soon became one of its leaders. Leon's
passion was people. He wanted to win the crowds, pruticularly the Marxist
ones. He wanted them to share his ideals of social and spiritual change for
society. He wanted to lift people up; to forge for them a stable, efficient
and responsible state, a state backed by the good sense of people and for
the sole benefit of the people. No wonder Degrelle often said: "Either you
have the people with you, or you have nothing with you." Degrelle, in short,
was a populist
Although he was not yet 25, people listened to him avidly. It has been
estinlated that he addressed more than 2,000 public meetings. His books
and newspaper were read everywhere because they always dealt with the
real issues. And in a few short years he had won over a large part of the
population. Belgium's corrupt political establishment took serious note of
this upstart Although Degrelle had initially been working with Belgium's
Catholic Party (one of the nation's three ruling parties, the others being
the liberals and the Socialists) he ultimately began to become disillusioned
with the party's ruling clique and began focusing his efforts on building his
Rexist movement
Demanding radical political refonn and the establishment of an author-
itative "corporative" state of social justice and national unity, Degrelle
launched a hard-driving and brilliant propaganda crunpaign against the rul-
ing parties, which he came to describe as the pourris-that is, "the cor-
rupt"-and the Rexist movement made great political capital out of the
cynical financial manipulations of the parties and their hench1nen. Degrelle
called them "the banksters."
Degrelle's movement recognized that the ruling parties, so cooperative
when it came to dividing the spoils that accrue to politicians, fostered di-
vision and strife throughout Belgium. Historian Allan Cassels points out
that, "gradually, Degrelle became more and more anti-capitalist-a shift
that was not so much a response to the Great Depression as it was a grow-
ing awareness of the ties between business and government revealed in
several Belgian scandals."1
The platfonn of the Rexist party reflected the populist tilt: "First and
foremost, it opposed the dictatorship of super capitalism in Belgium and
the Congo and then went on to dismiss Belgian parties and the parlian1en-
INTRODUCTION I 9
tary system itself as mere extensions of the rotten business world ....
Banks were to be controlled in an unspecified way and unemployment
solved by so1ne sort of national planning. Workers were to be protected
by a corporative system 'based on the solidarity of the classes,' and the or-
ganizational structure for Rexist confederations was formulated on paper
for trade, industry, agriculture, the artisans, the professions and even the
party's administration of the Belgian Congo. Yet, much of the old order
would remain; there was room for the monarchy, and even Parliament in
truncated fonn would share legislative authority with the corporations."2
On May 24, 1936 Degrelle's Rexist candidates won a smashing electoral
victory against the established parties by capturing a total of 34 House and
Senate seats.
However, the ruling parties of Belgium soon rose to meet the Rexists'
threat to their power by uniting in a solid phalanx against the young pop-
ulist leader. Even the Catholic hierarchy condemned the church's most ar-
dent son in the interests of "moderation." As a consequence, the Rex
1novement's fortunes began to decline. Although his party began to disin-
tegrate under the establishment's applied pressure, Degrelle himself was
re-elected to the Parliament with the largest majority of any deputy.
The Europe of Degrelle was still split into little countries, each jealous
of its past glories and closed to any contact with neighboring peoples. In
the late 1930s, as war loo1ned, Degrelle devoted his attention to assuring
Belgiu1n's neutrality in order to prevent his nation from again being used
as a buffer between Germany and France in the event of hostilities. But,
even as he labored for the short-term integrity of Belgium's borders, the
far-sighted Degrelle was also looking toward the future of the continent. In
his student days he had traveled across Latin Alnerica, the United States
and Canada. He had visited North Africa, the Middle East and, of course,
all of the European countries. He felt that Europe had a unique destiny to
fulfill and must unite behind its com1non cultural heritage.
Mussolini invited Degrelle to Ro1ne. Churchill saw him in London, and
Hitler received him in Berlin. Putting his political life on the line, he made
desperate efforts to stop the railroading of Europe into another war. But old
rivalries, petty hatreds and suspicion between the French and the Germans
were cleverly exploited. The established parties and the Communist Party
worked on the san1e side: for war. For the Kremlin it was a unique opportu-
nity to communize Europ~after it had first been weakened and bled.
On Sept. 3, 1939-due to pressure from organized Jewry throughout
10 I HITLER DEMOCRAT
the ,vorld, in addition to the efforts of U.S. President Franklin Roosevelt

(who n1aintained intimate ties to the powerful Jewish elite in the United
States)-England declared war on Gennany, although Hitler had done
everything possible to stop war from occuring.
When Belgiwn was dragged into the war in 1940, Degrelle's political en-
e1nies saw an opportunity to strike down the Rexist leader. He was arrested
by government loyalists on May 10, 1940, accused of being a "fifth colum-
nist," and was in1prisoned, beaten and tortured. Given up for dead by his
family, Degrelle ended up at a concentration camp in southern France.
However, when Gennan officials favorably inclined toward Degrelle
learned of his whereabouts, he was released and returned to Belgium,
where, in fact, he initially avoided collaborating with the Gennan occupa-
tion forces, unlike, ironically, many of his opportunistic foes in the prewar
"democratic" Belgian political establishment
But the European civil war continued. And the rulers of Communism
got ready to move in and pick up the fractured pieces. Learning of Josef
Stalin's plan to invade the heart of Western Europe through Soviet occu-
pied Poland and then Germany, Hitler beat him to the punch by launching
a preemptive invasion of the Soviet Union on June 22, 1941.
The most important political and military phenomenon of World War II
is also the least known: the Waffen-SS (literally "weapons Schutzstaffel," or
"anned defense unit"). And Leon Degrelle was one of the most famous Waf-
fen-SS soldiers. The Waffen-SS were the ideological and military shock
troops of a planned New Order for Europe. After the Gennans began their
assault against the bastion of international Communism, from every coun-
try in Europe thousands of young men came forth, their 1ninds resolved
that the destiny of their native countries was now at stake.
These men volunteered their lives in the fight against the Soviets be-
lieving that, after first destroying the Bolshevik threat, they would work
together to create a united Europe. Volunteers swelled the ranks of the
Waffen-SS, which grew to include more than 400,000 non-Gennan Euro-
peans fighting on the Eastern Front Scores of new divisions were added
to the Waffen-SS order of battle. The Gennan troops numbered 600,000.
Despite the past efforts of Napoleon, the one-million-strong Waffen-SS
represented the first truly pan-European anny to ever exist. As envisioned,
after the war each unit of this anny was to provide its people with a polit-
ical structure free of the petty nationalism of the past. All the SS fought
the same struggle. All shared the same world view. All were comrades in
INTRODUCTION 11
anns and suffered the same wounds.

When Hitler struck against the Soviet Union, Degrelle offered to raise
a volunteer battalion of his Walloons to ensure a place of honor for French-
speaking Belgians in Hitler's new Europe. After joining as a private he
earned all stripes from corporal to general for exceptional bravery in com-
bat. He engaged in 75 hand-to-hand combat actions. He was wounded
seven times. He was the recipient of the highest honors and was, quite no-
tably, one of the first non-Gennans to be awarded the coveted Oak Leaves
to the Knight's Cross of the Iron Cross, personally bestowed upon Degrelle
by Hitler during a ceremony held in Berlin on Aug. 27, 1944.
It should be noted that when, in 1941, Degrelle first departed for the
Eastern Front he was 35 years old and had never even fired a gun. And al-
though he had been offered high rank-in tribute to his stellar prewar ac-
co1nplishments with the Rexist party-Degrelle, in the same manner as
Peter the Great, chose to start out as a private, sharing the burdens of his
comrades, rising by his abilities alone through the ranks to the position of
commander of the unit he raised: the SS Brigade "Wallonia."
It is thus no wonder that his fellow volunteers jokingly called their com-
rade-turned-leader, "Modest the First, Duke of Burgundy." But, of the first
800 Walloon volunteers who left for the Eastern Front, only three survived
the war-one of them Degrelle. Son1e 2,500 of his fellow Walloons died,
wearing the uniform of the Waffen-SS, while fighting the Soviets during
that period.
Of the SS Degrelle has said, "If the Waffen-SS had not existed, Europe
would have been overrun entirely by the Soviets by 1944. They would have
reached Paris long before the Alnericans. Waffen-SS herois1n stopped the
Soviet juggernaut at Moscow, Cherkov, Cherkassy and Tamopol. The So-
viets lost more than 12 months. Without SS resistance the Soviets would
have been in Nonnandy before Eisenhower. The people showed deep grat-
itude to the young men who sacrificed their lives. Not since the great reli-
gious orders of the Middle Ages had there been such selfless idealism and
heroism. In this century of materialism, the men of the SS stand out as a
shining light of spirituality. I have no doubt whatever that the sacrifices
and incredible feats of the Waffen-SS will have their own epic poets like
Schiller. Greatness in adversity is the distinction of the SS."
After four nearly continuous years in the infemo of battle, his legion
was one of the last to retreat from Russia. This titanic struggle against the
combined forces of Communism and the"Allied den1ocracies" is described
in his fruuous epic, Ca,1npaign in Russia, which earned him renown in Eu-
rope as "the Ho1ner of the 20th century."
And when Degrelle returned to Brussels after fighting Communism for
four years on the Eastern Front, he was given the largest mass welcome in
Belgian history. Tens of thousands of Belgians lined the streets of Brussels
to cheer the returning general only two months before the Allies invaded
their country.
However, Degrelle knew that he, as one of the fiercest foes of Commu-
nism who had survived the war, was targeted for extermination. He would
not bo,v to the conquerors.
As Gem1any collapsed, Degrelle made his way to Norway (still under
German control at that time), where he boarded a transport airplane and
flew over Allied-occupied portions of Europe. He and the crew endured
constant anti-aircraft fire all along the way, and crash landed on the Spanish
border when the plane ran out of fuel. Degrelle suffered multiple irtjuries
in the forced landing including several broken bones. He spent a year in the
hospital recuperating, most of it in a plaster cast, unable to move. 'Iypically,
as soon as his right arm became free, the SS general began writing his mas-
terwork, Campaign in Russia, which appeared in two French editions.
Soon after the cessation of hostilities, the Allies threatened to invade
Spain unless Degrelle and wartime French Prime Minister Pierre Laval
were immediately turned over for execution. Franco compromised. He
turned over Laval but kept Degrelle on the grounds that he could not be
physically removed from the hospital.
A year later Degrelle was given refuge in a monastery. However, back
home members of his family and many friends and supporters were ar-
rested and tortured to death by the "democratic liberators" of Belgium. His
children (seven girls and a little boy) were forcibly shipped to detention
centers in different parts of Europe, after their names were changed in
order to frustrate any effort to rewlite the family or ascertain their fate.
The Belgian authorities ordered that they were never to be permitted con-
tact with one another or with their father.
The new Belgian government condemned Degrelle to death in absentia
on three separate occasions. Aspecial law was passed, the Lex Degrellana,
which made it illegal to transfer, possess, or receive any book by or about
Degrelle. Campaign in Russia was thus banned in Belgium.
Completely alone, Degrelle went on to rebuild his shattered life. With
the energy and burning spirit that had never left him, he worked as a man-
INTRODUCTION 13
ual laborer in construction. And just as he had risen from private to general
on the battlefield, Degrelle rose to build a major construction company
with important contracts. The quality and efficiency of his company be-
caine so well known that the U.S. government commissioned him to build
major defense projects, including military airfields, in Spain. Meanwhile,
Degrelle's loyal emissaries searched Europe for his lddnapped children.
All were found and returned to their father's loving care.
On 12 separate occasions over some 40 years Degrelle challenged the
Belgian government to put him on public trial with ajury. His repeated de-
mands to be tried in a legitimate court of law (as opposed to an inquisi-
tional Nuremberg-style show trial) were met with embarrassed and guilty
silence. However, there were high-level attempts to "liquidate" Degrelle
during his exile in Spain. On July 5, 1961 the Spanish police arrested two
individuals attempting to cross into Spain from a small village in the Pyre-
nees Mountains on the French border. Traveling in a Lincoln Continental
were an Israeli citizen using the name Zuis Alduide Idelon and another per-
son with a French passport under the name Suison Jake De Mon.
In their possession were weapons, ammunition, foreign currency val-
ued at approximately $500,000 (U.S.), an anesthetic ldt, the detailed plans
of a Spanish villa and, lastly, a box shaped like a coffin. The two eventually
confessed that they were in a commando team worldng for Israeli intelli-
gence, charged with kidnapping Gen. Degrelle. Their plan was as follows:
Part of the team (composed in total of 10 men) was to arrive in a heli-
copter at Degrelle's estate, grab and sedate him and bring him to Thrragona
There, the unconscious Degrelle would have been put in the box and taken
aboard a small boat at night and taken to a French Mediterranean port
where he would have been shipped on a large vessel bound for Israel. Upon
arrival Degrelle would have been put on display and then delivered to the
Belgian government or simply murdered.
Subsequently the Spanish police succeeded in arresting the leader of
the commando team, a Spanish Communist, Rubio de la Goaquina, as well
as six of his men. The police learned that the lddnapping plot had been
arranged, in part, through the assistance of Soviet agents.
In 1983 the Spanish socialists, in league with international Jewish pr~
sure groups, began a loud clamor to have Degrelle deported from Spain,
but the effort failed. This, however, did not stop those same Jewish pres-
sure groups from launching yet a second offensive against Degrelle. Lead-
ing the pack was Rabbi Marvin Hier (called by his critics Rabbi "Liar") and
his colleague, Rabbi Abrahrun Cooper, both leaders of a very profitable

fund-raising venture known as the Simon Wiesenthal Center for Holocaust
Studies, a Los Angeles-based operation nruned after the controversial self-
described "Nazi hunter."
Since it had been finally adnlitted that the most infamous "Nazi fugi-
tive," Dr. Josef Mengele, was actually dead and gone and not "hiding in Ar-
gentina" (or Bolivia or Paraguay or Panama or some such place), Hier and
Cooper evidently decided that Gen. Degrelle was an ideal new "Nazi beast"
to have as their fund-raising "poster boy."
Tile two put up a $100,000 bounty for the "capture" of Degrelle, but that
in itself was a farce, since Degrelle lived freely and openly in Spain, where
he was a popular figure in cafe society, often dining with a host of friends,
including many inte1national admirers who crune to call on the retired mil-
itary leader and European statesman.
The Hier-Cooper gang hysterically and vocally demanded that Degrelle
be tried for "war crin1es" and, of course, urged donors to help finance their
public relations campaign against the general. Interestingly, several years
previously, Jean Chartier, a prominent French television producer who was
preparing a documentary on Degrelle, approached both the Anti-Defa1na-
tion League of B'nai B'rith and Sinlon Wiesenthal asking for information he
could include in his planned project as to the nature and brutality of the
"war critnes" Degrelle might have committed. They informed Chartier that
there was no evidence against Degrelle and that the Belgian general was
not wanted for war critnes by any international tribunal as such. However,
now that it was in the (financial) interest of the Silnon Wiesenthal Center
to have a new "war crilninal at large," the story changed.
At the time, Degrelle commented on the affair in an exclusive interview
published in The Spollight on Oct 28, 1985. Degrelle told The SpoUight:
"Dr. AbrahalU Cooper knows very well that he does not possess the least
argument against me. He confesses himself that he can only base hilnself
on suppositions." Degrelle pointed out that Cooper had said, for example:
"It would not surprise me but that he [Degrelle] has committed blood
crimes."
"Can you imagine that?" asked Degrelle. "As if during 40 years they have
made countless investigations against me, all of which have proven fruit-
less for the simple reason that there was nothing against me. Cooper does
not stand on ceremony when he admits that what he wants to make me pay
for are not any reprehensible acts, but ideas, my ideas. To avenge himself
INTRODUCTION I 15
on the ideas of a person who thinks differently than himself, the Jewish
dignitary mounts a manhunt abroad with a $100,000 prize for whoever
brings in the beast alive.
'"Leon Degrelle,' Dr. Abraham Cooper has declared [of me], 'is guilty of
pron1oting Nazi ideas among the young people of the whole world. We shall
follow him closely, and we will see to it that he pays for his misdeeds.'
"You have read right: 'ideas,' " added Degrelle. "One cannot any longer
have ideas other than those approved by Rabbi Abraham. Such intolerance
is unheard of, especially conling from a country such as the United States,
where the freedo1n of thought is proclaimed to be sacred. This manhunt,
organized by private people, has something monstrous about it
"These hunters have at their disposal very considerable funds. Those
funds, this 1nodern river of gold, until this summer were earmarked to kid-
nap Josef Mengele. But now it has been established that Mengele has been
dead for n1ore than five years, while Wiesenthal was announcing to the
world that he was following Mengele's track-that he was about to capture
him at any moment. He was describing every phase of his pursuit, every
hideaway Mengele hadjustvacated, moments before Wiesenthal's arrival-
places where Mengele had never been."
Degrelle said, though, that he was not afraid of the "contract" that the
Jewish leaders had put out on him:
"I've seen other stuff, on the Eastern Front. I continue to live my life
exactly as before, going to buy my newspapers myself in the street, drink-
ing a glass quietly by the seashore. I am not going to poison what is left of
my life with proble1ns of security. I believe in my luck, and I believe in God.
He will sort out the hunters of 1nillions of dollars and the persecuted. I rely
on His protection and on His justice."
Although Degrelle was able to foil the Simon Wiesenthal Center's cam-
paign against him, his sworn enemies made one last attempt to dispose of
the general. Hebdo magazine, published by the French National Front, re-
vealed on Dec. 27, 1985 that some 10 persons carrying Venezuelan pass-
ports and most Jikely connected with the Mossad arrived in Madrid for the
purpose of once again attempting to kidnap Degrelle. Their plot, however,
was again foiled by ever-vigilant Spanish authorities.
There may well have been other schemes launched against Degrelle,
but the old general continued to live freely and to carry out his own per-
sonal crusade for truth in history.
Despite his advancing years, Gen. Degrelle embarked during this pe-
riod on an anlbitious project that would be his crowning triumph as a pro-

lific wordsnlith, befitting one once described as "one of the outstanding
writers in the French language." In his lifetime Degrelle had published
more than 40 books and essays ranging from poetry to economics, from ar-
chitecture to history, but the new project was one of massive scope.
The Belgian statesman began working on a projected 14-volume series
to be collectively titled The Hitler Century, focusing (obviously) on the
role of Adolf Hitler in the 20th century and his influence beyond.
Degrelle relished the opportunity to be able to speak freely and valued
the chance to be able to have his thoughts expressed in the English lan-
guage to audiences who certainly never had the opportunity to hear "the
other side" expressed in such heartfelt language from one who was there.
The general wryly noted at the time that, "Whenever I hear the Allied
side of history, I am often reminded of the reporter sent to report on a
brawl He scrupulously recorded all the blows delivered by one side and
none from the other. His story would truthfully bear witness to the aggres-
sion of one side and the victimization of the other. But he would be lying
by omission. I do not deny anything that Hitler did, but I also point out
what the Communists and their Western allies did, and I let the public be
thejudge."
Degrelle was guaranteed that he would receive all the necessary fund-
ing for the project, and in short order, Degrelle turned out the first volume,
a handsome book published by the Institute for Historical Review (IHR),
then based in Torrance, California, which Willis Carto had founded in 1978
and which had become the driving force behind what has come to be
lmown as the historical revisionist movement
Degrelle's first volume-an indisputable masterpiece-was Hitler:
Born at Versailles. Based upon the premise that "there would never have
been a Hitler without the Versailles Treaty'' and that the history of Hitler
and Germany can be understood only within the context of the Versailles
Treaty and the harsh subjugation of Germany by its implacable enemies,
Degrelle's 535-page volume surveyed the Franco-British intrigues in the af-
fairs of Central Europe, the systematic betrayal of Wilson's Fourteen
Points, the secret treaties that doomed Wtlson's mission from the start, and
the cynical dividing up of vast t.erritories by the major powers concluded
without regard to the will of the millions of hapless inhabitants-the mu-
tilation of Germany and Austria-Hungary that parceled out many millions
of ~rmans (and German Austrians), Hungarians and others like cattle to
INTRODUCTION I 17
the hostile rule of alien neighboring countries.

Widely hailed upon its release-with readers worldwide eager for more
from Degrelle's pen-this first volume laid the foundation for the forth-
con1ing series of books to follow. The proposed additional volumes were:
Hitler Democrat; Hitler and the Germans; Hitler and the Church; Hitler
and Oie United Smtes; Hitler and Stalin; Hitler and England; Hitler and
France; Hitler and the Banks; Hitler and tlie Communists; Hitler and
the Jews; Hitler tJie Politician; Hitler tlie Milit,ary Strategis~· and Hiller
and the Third World.
Enthusiastic about the new project the general threw himself into his
work with a devotion that was remarkable. At 79 years of age, Degrelle
had tackled a project that few men of any age would ever even dream of
attempting to undertake. By 1993 Degrelle had completed six additional
volumes, and the IHR was into the translation and production of volumes
II and III of the series when tragedy struck.
The IHR itself was taken over from within-literally at gunpoint-by a
group of conspirators who were being supported in this treason from be-
hind the scenes by a shadowy San Francisco real estate heir, who not only
had intimate family ties to the legendary and powerful Straus faintly of
New York's famed "Our Crowd" Jewish elite, but who also had been en-
gaged in activitity (both in the Middle East and Asia) traceable directly to
the intrigues of Israel's intelligence agency, the Mossad, and allied elements
inside the American CIA.
So the forces behind the IHR' destruction were certainly the same
forces that had conspired for so long against Degrelle. Thusi it is absolutely
no surprise that, immediately after the takeover, the cabal now controlling
the IHR targeted Gen. Degrelle's Hitler Century series, with the intention-
which was successful-of temlinating it.
The IHR assassins went out of their way to attack the general's work.
One affidavit filed by the conspirators refen-ed to Degrelle's works as being
an embarrassment to the IHR because they were "flagrantly pro-Hitler."
Another described Degrelle's 1nonumental work as a "white elephant with
a big swastika on its side."
The cainpaign against the Belgian general was bizarre to say the least,
if only because Degrelle's Hitler Century series had been one of the IHR's
most highly regarded projects.
What's more, the sales of the first volume, Hitlel:· Born at Versailles,
had been a tremendous financial boon for the IHR, and it had been ex-
18 l HITLER DEMOCRAT
pected that the forthco1ning volumes would also be equally popular.

In any case, the subversion of Degrelle's work clearly laid bare the
agenda and n1oti.vati.ons of the group now in control of the IHR: their mis-
sion was to destroy the historical revisionist movement at its core. And the
legacy of Degrelle was a primary target
Ironically, however, thousands of miles away in Spain, Gen. Degrelle
did not know of the treason at the IHR and was continuing his work, be-
lieving that the manuscripts he had completed were safe in the hands of the
IHR and being systematically readied for release. However, what happened
next was an episode difficult to comprehend by a normal human mind. On
Jan. 28, 1994 a letter was sent to Degrelle by the conspirators. The letter
read as follows:
Dear General Degrelle:

It is our difficult task to infonn you that an editorial review here
has established that, as so far recei~ed1 the several volumes on the
biography of Adolf Hitler you have submitted are unpublishable. The
problems include: A fundamental lack of historical objectivity; nu-
merous errors of fact; excessive reliance on other texts, either prop-
erly cited or with citation omitted; frequent repetitions.
At this time, supported by our board of directors and on the advice
of our attorney, we must ask you to stop work on the Hitler project.
The letter was signed, "sincerely." In 1985, the author of the offending
letter, in writing an introduction to Degrelle's Campaign in Russia, re-
ferred to Degrelle as "one of the great men of this or any century," and de-
clared that, "Degrelle has no qualms about telling hard truths and making
hardjudgments."
The conspirators at the nm were in possession of the manuscripts De-
grelle had completed. The Hitler Century series had been successfully
killed. The conspirators refused to give up the precious manuscripts and
as this is written (many years later) they have never been published and it
is likely that they have been destroyed.
Although Degrelle was 87, he was still in remarkable health and re-
tained full mental capacity. But the receipt of the malicious letter coupled
with the events at the IRR, coming at such a critical time in the twilight of
his long career, hurt the general severely. He immediately sickened, and
on April 1, 1994 the Angel of Death finally took this man who had cheated
INTRODUCTION I 19
him so many times before. Communist bullets, flame-throwers, grenades,

shrapnel, tanks, assassination squads, jailers and torturers could not kill
Leon Degrelle, but treason did.
Degrelle's widow, Madame Jeanne Degrelle, commented in a letter of
June 22, 1994 (published in The Spotlight):
"I take here the opportunity to affinn against the lies of these doubtful
individuals. My husband was meticulous on all his historical facts; he was
in possession of a huge pool of references, historical documents and writ-
ings at every level All his works, past and future, were of the highest aca-
demic level. Numerous historians from the entire world paid tribute to him
for his prodigious contribution to the history of the world."
The tragic circumstances surrounding the final months of Gen. Degrelle
and the loss of his valuable manuscripts must be a part of the record-un-
fortunate though the details may be-for they illustrate the lengths to
which Degrelle's foes would go to silence this vibrant voice in history.
Yet, despite the outrageous turn of events that had led to the destruction
of the IHR (and ultimately of Degrelle), all was not lost.
By the genuine grace of God, both Wtllis Carto and Degrelle's wife still
controlled earlier drafts of some of Degrelle's writings and with Madame
Degrelle's generous support and through a laborious process of careful re-
construction-requiring hundreds of man hours, including the efforts of
multiple translators and editors-the staff of THE BARNES REVIEW (the new
journal launched by Willis Carto and loyal revisionists in 1994 in the wake
of the IHR's destruction) was able to literally resurrect Degrelle's lost
work-or certainly a significant part of it.
That surviving material-published in THE B ~ REVIEW over a period
of years-is now, at long last, appearing in its entirety in Hitler Democrat
between two covers for the first time.
So, in the end, this volume is not only a monumental work of history, a
genuine epic, but it is also, in its own fashion, a tribute to the man behind
it: General Leon Degrelle.
How then does one conclude what is admittedly an insufficient assess-
ment of this remarkable man? Perhaps the defiant words of Gen. Degrelle
himself sum it up best. Once, when asked by a journalist if he had any re-
grets about World War II, Degrelle responded: "Only that we lost."
ENDNOTES:
' Alan Cassels. Fa.sci.sm, New York, •momas Y. Crowell Co., 1976, p. 247.
2 /bid., p. 247.
A painting of Hitler relaxing with one his German shepherds. Hitler owned several
German shepherds over the course of his life including Prinz, Muck!, Bionda and
Biondi. After he was forced to give up his first shepherd, Prinz, due to poverty in Aus-
tria, the dog returned to him, and its loyalty earned Hitler's life-long love for the breed.
CHAPTER
THE ENIGMA OF HITlER
itler-you knew him-what was he like?" I have
'' been asked that question a thousand times since

1945, and none is more difficult to answer. So1ne
200,000 books have dealt with the Second World
War and especially with Adolf Hitler. But has an au-
thentic Hitler been discovered in any of them?
"The enigma of Hitler is beyond all human co1nprehension," stated
Die Zeit, tl1e liberal Gem1an newspaper.
Salvador Dall, art's unique genius, attempted to solve it in one of his
most intensely dramatic paintings. Lowering mountain landscapes all but
fill the canvas, leaving only a few lwninous meters of seashore dotted
with delicately miniaturized human figures: the last witnesses to a dying
peace. A huge telephone receiver dripping tears of blood hangs from tl1e
branch of a dead tree; and here and there hang umbrellas and bats whose
po1tent is visibly tl1e same.
As Dall tells it, "Chamberlain's wnbrella appeared in this painting in a
sinister light, identified by the bat, and it affected me when I painted it as
a thing of enonnous anguish."
He then confided: "I felt this painting to be deeply prophetic. But I
con.fess tl1at I haven't yet figured out the Hitler enig1na eitller. He attracted
me only as an object of my wild iinaginings and because he projected be-
fore my eyes as a 1nan with tile gift of effecting incomparable change."
What a lesson in humility for the critics who have rushed into print
since 1945 with their tllousands of "definitive" books, most of them scorn-
ful, about this man who so troubled the introspective Dall that forty years
later he still felt anguished and uncertain in the presence of his own hal-
lucinatory painting.
Apart from Dall, who else has ever trted to present an objective por-
trayal of this extraordinary man whom Dall labeled the most explosive
figure in human history?
The n1ountains of Hitler books based on blind hatred and ignorance
do little to describe or explain tl1e most powerful man the world has ever
seen. How, I ponder, do these thousands of disparate portraits of Hitler
in any way resemble tl1e man I knew? The Hitler seated beside me, stand-
ing up, talking, listening. It has become almost impossible to explain to
people fed fantastic tales for decades that what they have read or have
heard on television just does not correspond to the truth.
People have come to accept fiction, repeated a thousand times over,
as reality. Yet they have never seen Hitler, never spoken to him, never
heard a word from his mouth. The very name of Hitler immediately con-
jures up a grimacing devil, the fount of all one's negative emotions. Like
Pavlov's bell, the mention of Hitler is meant to dispense with substance
and reality. In time, however, history will demand more than these sum-
mary judgments.
Hitler is always present before my eyes: as a man of peace in 1936, as
a man of war in 1944. It is not possible to have been a personal witness
to the life of such an extraordinary man without being marked by it for-
ever. Not a day goes by but Hitler rises again in my memory, not as a man
long dead, but as a real being who paces his office floor, seats himself in
his chair, pokes the burning lo~ in his fireplace.
The first thing anyone noticed when he came into view was his small
mustache. Countless times he had been advised to shave it off, but he al-
ways refused: people were used to him the way he was. He was not tall.
Nor were Napoleon or Alexander the Great Hitler had deep blue eyes
that many found bewitching, although I did not find them so. Nor did I de-
tect the electric current his hands were said to give off. I gripped them
quite a few times and was never struck by this lightning.
His face showed emotion or indifference according to the passion or
apathy of the moment At times he was as though benumbed, saying not
a word, while his jaws moved as if they were grinding an obstacle to
smithereens. Then he would come suddenly alive and launch into a
speech directed at you alone, as though he were addressing a crowd of
THE ENIGMA OF HITLER I 23
two million people at the Tempelhof airfield. Then he became as if trans-

figured. Even his complexion, otherwise rather dull, lit up as he spoke.
And at such tunes, to be sure, Hitler was strangely attractive and as if
possessed of magic powers.
Anything that might have seemed too solemn in his remarks, he
quickly tempered with a touch of humor. TI1e picturesque word, the biting
phrase were at his command. In a flash he would paint a word-picture
that brought a smile, or come up with an unexpected and disarming com-
parison. He could be harsh and even implacable in hisjudgments and yet
almost at the same tune be surprisingly conciliatory, sensitive and warm.
After 1945 Hitler was accused of every cruelty, but it was not in his na-
ture to be cruel. He loved children. It was an entirely natural thing for
him to stop his car and share his food with young cyclists along the road.
Once he gave his raincoat to a derelict plodding in the rain. At midnight
he would interrupt his work and prepare the food for his dog, Biondi.
If he did not like cats, it was only because they ate birds.
He could not bear to eat meat, since it meant the death of a living crea-
ture. He refused to have so much as a rabbit or a trout sacrificed to pro-
vide his food. He would allow only eggs on his table, because egg-laying
meant that the hen had been spared rather than killed.
Hitler's eating habits were a constant source of amazement. How
could someone on such a rigorous schedule, who had taken part in tens
of thousands of exhausting meetings fron1 which he emerged bathed with
sweat, often losing two to four pounds in the process; who slept only
three to four hours a night; and who, from 1940 to 1945, carried the whole
world on his shoulders while ruling over 380 million Europeans: how, I
wondered, could he physically survive on just a boiled egg, a few toma-
toes, two or three pancakes and a plate of noodles? But he did.
He drank only water. He did not smoke and would not tolerate sn1ok-
ing in his presence. At one or two o'clock in the mo1ning he would still
be talking, untroubled, close to his fireplace, lively, often an1t1sing. He
never showed any sign of weariness. Dead tired his audience might be,
but not Hitler.
He was depicted as a tired old man. Nothing was further from the
truth. In September of 1944, when he was reported to be fairly doddering,
I spent a week witl1 him. His mental and physical vigor were still excep-
tional. The attempt 1nade on his life on July 20 had, if anything, recharged
him. He took tea in his quarters as tranquilly as if we had been in his small
private apartluent at the chancellery before the war, or el\joying the view
of snow and bright blue sl<y tluough his great bay window at Berchtes-
gaden.
At tl1e very end of his life, to be sure, his back had become bent, but
his mind renlained as clear as a flash of lightning. The testament he dic-
tated with extraordinary composure on the eve of his death, at three in
the morning of April 30, 1945, provides us a lasting testimony. Napoleon
at Fontainebleu was not without his moments of panic before his abdica-
tion. Caesar was dumbfounded at his assassination and covered his head
witil his toga when he saw his adopted son about to stab him in the chest
Hitler simply breakfasted as on any other day, shook hands with his as-
sociates in silence, then went to his death as if he were going for a stroll.
When has history everwitnes.5ed so enonnous a tragedy brought to its
end witil such iron self-eontrol?
Hitler's most notable characteristic was ever his simplicity. The most
complex of problems resolved itself in his mind into a few basic princi-
ples. His actions were geared to ideas and decisions that could be under-
stood by anyone. The laborer from Essen, the isolated farmer, the Ruhr
industrialist, and tile university professor could all easily follow his line
of thought. The very clarity of his reasoning made everything obvious.
His behavior and his lifestyle never changed even when he became
tile ruler of Gennany. He dressed and lived frugally. During his early days
in Munich, he spent no more than a mark per day for food. At no stage in
his life did he spend anything on himself. Throughout his 13 years in the
chancellery he never carried a wallet or ever had money of his own.
Hitler was self-taught and made no attempt to hide the fact The smug
conceit of intellectuals, their shiny ideas packaged like so many flashlight
batteries, irritated him at times. His own knowledge he had acquired
through selective and unremitting study, and he knew far more than thou-
sands of diplorna-decorat.ed academics.
I don't think anyone ever read as much as he did. He read at least one
book every day, always reading the end and the index first in order to
gauge the book's interest for him. He had the power to extract the essence
of each book and then store it in his computer-like mind. I have heard
him talk about complicated scientific books with faultless precision, even
at the height of the war.
His intellectual curiosity was limitless. He fairly lived on the writings
of the most diverse authors, and nothing was too complex for his corn-
prehension. He had a deep knowledge and understanding of Buddha,

Confucius and Jesus Christ, as well as Luther, Calvin or Savonarola; of lit-
erary giants such as Dante, Schiller, Shakespeare, Goethe; and analytical
writers such as Renan and Gobineau, Chamberlain and Sorel.
He had trained himself in philosophy by studying Aristotle and Plato.
Although the latter did not fit into his system, Hitler was nevertheless
able to extract what he deemed of value. He could quote entire para-
graphs of Schopenhauer from memory, and for a long time carried a
pocket edition of Schopenhauer with him. Nietzsche taught him much
about willpower.
His thirst for knowledge was unquenchable. He spent hundreds of
hours studying the works of Tacitus and Mornmsen, military strategists
like Clausewitz, or empire builders like Bismarck. Nothing escaped him:
world history or the history of civilizations, the study of the Bible and the
Talmud, Thomistic philosophy and all the masterpieces of Homer, Sopho-
cles, Horace, Ovid, 'Iitus Livius and Cicero. He knew Julian the Apostate
as if he had been his contemporary.
His knowledge also extended to mechanics. He knew how engines
worked; he understood the ballistics of various weapons; and he aston-
ished the best medical scientists with his knowledge of medicine and bi-
ology. The universality of Hitler's knowledge may surprise or displease
those unaware of it, but it is nonetheless a historical fact: Hitler was one
of the most cultivated men of the 20th century. A thousand times more so
than Churchill, an intellectual mediocrity; or than Pierre Laval, with his
mere cursory knowledge of history; or than Roosevelt; or Eisenhower,
who never got beyond detective novels.
From his earliest years, Hitler was different from other children. He al-
ways had an inner strengtl1 and was guided by his spirit and his instincts.
He could draw skillfully when he was only 11 years old. His sketches
made at that age show a remarkable fimmess and liveliness, in particular
his portrait of Wallenstein.
His first paintings and watercolors, created at age 15, are full of poetry
and sensitivity. One of his most in1portant works, The Ut,opian Fortress,
also shows him to have been an imaginative artist.
His artistic orientation took many fonTIS. He wrote poetry from the
time he was a lad. He dictated a complete play to his sister Paula, who
was amazed at his creation. At the age of 16, in Vienna, he launched into
the creation of an opera. He even designed the stage settings, as well as
all t11e costlunes; and, of course, tlle characters were Wagnerian heroes.
More tl1anjust an artist, Hitler was above all an architect Hundreds of his
works are notable as much for tl1e architecture as for the painting. From
n1e1nory alone he could reproduce in every detail the onion do1ne of a
church or tl1e intricate cu1ves of wrought iron. Indeed, it was to fulfill his
dreain of beconling ail architect tllat Hitler went to Vie1u1a at the begin-
ning of tl1e centl1ry.
When one sees tl\e hundreds of paintings, sketches and drawings he
created at the tune which reveal his 1nastery of three-dilnensional figures,
it is astounding tl1at his exaininers failed him in two successive inter-
views. The Gennan historian Werner Maser, no friend to Hitler, castigated
his exailliners: "All of his works revealed extraordinary architectlu-al gifts
and lmowledge. TI1e builder of the Tilird Reich gives the fonner Fine Arts
Academy of Vienna cause for shaine."
I.J.upressed by tl1e beauty of tl1e church in a Benedictine monastery
where he was part of tile choir aild served as all altar boy, Hitler drerunt
fleetingly of beco1ning a Benedictine n1onk. And it was at that time, too,
interestingly enough, tl1at whenever he attended Mass, he always had to
pass beneatll tile first swastika he had ever seen: it was graven in the
stone escutcheon of tile abbey portal.
Hitler's father, a customs officer, hoped the boy would follow in his
footsteps aild become a civil servant His tutor encouraged him to be-
come a monk. Instead tile young Hitler went, or rather he fled, to Vienna
And t11ere, thwarted in his artistic aspirations by the bureaucratic medi-
ocrities of academia, he turned to isolation and meditation. Lost in tile
capital of Austria-Hungary, he searched for his destiny.
April 20, 1889 did not mean anything to anybody in the first 30 years
of Hitler's life. He was born on t11at date in Braunau, a sn1all town in the
mn valley. During his exile in Vienna, he often tllought of his modest home
and particularly of his mother. When she fell ill, he went ho1ne to look
after her. For weeks he nursed her, did all the household chores, and sup-
ported her as the most loving of sons. When she finally died, on Christinas
eve, his pain was immense. Wracked with grief, he buried his mother in
tile little country cemetery.
"I have never seen a son grieve so n1uch," said his mother's doctor,
who happened to be Jewish. In his roo1n Hitler always displayed an old
photograph of his motller. The memory of the mother he loved was witl1
him until the day he died. Before leaving this Eartl1, on Ap1il 30, 1945, he
placed his n1other's photograph in front of him.

She had blue eyes like his and a similar face. Her maternal intuition
told her that her son was different from other children. She acted almost
as if she knew her son's destiny. When she died, she felt anguished by the
inunense mystery surrounding her son.
Apart fro1n his mother, Hitler lived the life of an anchorite throughout
his youth. His greatest wish was to withdraw from the world. At heart a
loner, he wandered about, ate meager 1neals, but devoured the books of
three public libraries. He abstained from talking and had few friends.
It is almost ilnpossible to ilnagine another such destiny where a man
started with so little and reached such heights. Alexander the Great was
the son of a king. Napoleon was a general at 24 and the protege of
Robespierre, besides coming from a well-to-do family. Fifteen years after
Vienna, Hitler would still be an unknown corporal. TI1ousands of others
had a thousand times more opportunity to leave tlteir 1nark on the world.
Hitler had not yet focused on politics, but without his rightly knowing
it, that was the career to which he was most strongly called. Politics
would ultimately blend with his passion for art. People, the masses,
would be the clay the sculptor shapes into an immortal fonn. That human
clay would become for him a beautiful work of rut like a Myron-of-Eleu-
therae marble, a Hans Makart painting, or a Wagner's Ring Trilogy.
His love of1nusic, art and architecture had not in fact taken him away
from the political and social events of Vienna. In order to survive, he
worked as a co1nmon laborer side by side with other workers. He was a
silent spectator, but nothing escaped him: not the vanity and egoism of
the bourgeoisie, nor tlte 1noral and 1naterial misery of the people, nor yet
the hundreds of tl1ousands of workers who surged down tl1e wide av-
enues of Vienna witl1 anger in their hearts.
He had also been taken aback by the growing presence in Vienna of
bearded Jews wearing caftans, a sight unknown in Linz.
"How can they be Gennans?" he asked himself.
He read tlte statistics: in 1860 tl1ere were 69 Jewish families in Vienna;
40 years later there were 200,000. TI1ey were everywhere. He saw them
tlrrowing rope ladders from their balconies to help other Jews climb up.
He saw tl1en1 invade the universities, the legal and medical professions,
and take over the newspapers.
Hitler had been exposed fro1n within the ranks of the workers to the
reaction created by this influx, but the workers were not alone in reacting.
There were many prominent persons in both Austria and Hungary who
did not hide their resenbnent at what they believed was an alien invasion
of their countty. The mayor of Vienna, a Christian Democrat and a pow-
erful orator, was eagerly listened to by Hitler.
Hitler was also concerned with tbe fate of the eight million Austrian
Germans kept apart from Gennany and thus deprived of their rightful
German nationhood. He saw Emperor Franz Josef as a bitter and petty
old man unable to cope witl1 tl1e problems of the day and the aspirations
of the future.
Hitler still held his peace, but he was summing things up in his mind.
First: Ausbians were part of Gennany, the common fatherland. Second:
The Jews were aliens within the German community. Third: Patriotism
was only valid if it was shared by all classes. The common people with
whom Hitler had shared grief and humiliation were just as much a part
of the fatherland as the millionaires of high society. Fourth: Class war
would inevitably condemn both workers and bosses to ruin in any coun-
tzy. No countcy can suxvive class war; only cooperation between workers
and bosses can benefit the countcy. Workers must be respected and live
with decency and honor. Creativity must never be stifled.
When Hitler later said that he had fonned his social and political doc-
trine in Vienna, he told the truth. Ten years later his observations made
in Vienna would become the order of the day.
Thus Hitler was to live for several years in the crowded city of Vienna
a virtual outcast, yet quietly observing everything around him. His
strength came from within. He did not rely on anybody to do his thinking
for him. Exceptional human beings always feel lonely amid the vast
human throng. Hitler saw his solitude as a wonderful opportwuty to med-
itate and not become submerged in a mindless sea
In order not to be lost in the wastes of a sterile desert, a strong soul
seeks refuge within himself. Hitler was such a soul.
The lighming in Hitler's life would come from the word. All his artistic
talent would be channeled into his mastery of communication and elo-
quence. Hitler would enchant and be enchanted by it He would find total
fulfillment when the magic of his words inspired the hearts and minds of
the masses he communed with. He would feel reborn each time he con-
veyed with mystical beauty the knowledge he had acquired in his lifetime.
Hitler's incantatory eloquence will remain, for a very long time, a vast
field of study for the psychoanalyst The power of Hitler's word is the key.
Without it tl1ere could never have been a Hitler era.

Did Hitler believe in God?
He believed deeply in God. He called God the Almighty, master of all
that is !mown and unlmown.
Propagandists portrayed Hitler as an atheist. He was not He had con-
te1npt for hypocritical and materialistic clerics, but he was not alone in
tl1at. He believed in the necessity of standards and theological dogmas,
without which, he repeatedly said, the great institution of the Christian
church would collapse. TI1ese dogmas clashed with his intelligence, but
he also recognized tl1at it was hard for the hu1nan mind to enco1npass
tl1e problems of creation, its limitless scope and breathtaking beauty. He
aclmowledged that every hun1an being had spiritual needs.
The song of the nightingale, the pattern and color of a flower, contin-
ually brought him back to tl1e great problems of creation. No one in the
world has spoken to 1ne so eloquently about the existence of God. Not be-
cause he was brought up as a Christian (Christianity had rather shocked
hiin initially), but because his analytical 1nind bound him to the concept
of God. Hitler's faith transcended fonnulas and contingencies. God was
for him the basis of everything, the ordainer of all things, of his destiny
and tl1at of all others.
Hitler was not much concerned with his private life. In Vienna he had
lived in sordid, vennin-infested lodgings. But for all that he rented a piano
that took up half of his room and concentrated on co1nposing his opera.
He lived on bread, 1nilk and vegetable soup. His poverty was real. He
did not even own an overcoat. He swept streets on snowy days. He car-
ried luggage at the railway station. He spent 1nany weeks in shelters for
the ho1neless. But he never stopped painting or reading.
Despite his dire poverty, Hitler somehow 1nanaged to n1aintain a clean
appearance. Landlords and landladies in Vienna and Munich all re1nem-
bered hin1 for his civility and pleasant disposition. His behavior was in1-
peccable. His room was always spotless, his 1neager belongings
1neticulously arranged, and his clotl1es neatly hung or folded. He washed
and ironed his own clotl1es, something which in tl1ose days few men did.
He needed almost notlling to survive. The sale of a few paintings was suf-
ficient to attend to all his needs.
TI1e First World War was a turning point in his life. He regarded it as
tl1e hand of destiny.
Adolf Hitler fought in many of the biggest battles In World War I and was injured by a
shell at the battle of the Somme, before he was assigned as an adjutant to his Regi-
mental Headquarters. This photo is from 1914, and shows Hitler with a long mus-
tache-that he was later ordered to trim.
CHAPTER
THE UNKNOWN SOLDIER
n August 1914 the unlmown artist would become the unlmown

soldier. His name was not even spelled correctly: It reads "Hi-
etler" in the administrative reports. No one had any idea of his vo-
cation as a painter or of his passion for music. As for his gift for
oratory, he hardly had any idea of it himself. He would have to
reach thirty before becoming suddenly aware of it.
Moreover, no one in Germany had an inkling of the dream motivat-
ing this unknown Austrian soldier come to Munich from Vienna, the
passionate dream of a unified greater Germany. But in Munich, a tailor
named Popp, who had rented Hitler a little room, recalled the inscrip-
tion posted at the head of his roomer's bed:
Freely with open heart we are waiting for you.

Full of hope and ready for action,
We are expecting you with joy.
Great German fatherland, we salute you.
Hitler lived in Munich on Schleisshimerstrasse, not far from Num-

ber 106, where another avid reader like himself lived in anonymity
under the name of Mayer. His real name was Ilyitch Ulyanov, later
changed to Lenin.
Irony of ironies: Hitler and Lenin walked the same narrow street
without ever lmowing each other or ever dreaming that their doctrines
would one day clash in the greatest war in history.

At Nu1nber 34, Hitler spent hundreds of hours painting and reading
,vitllout ever receiving any visitors. As in Vienna, he lived like a hennit
pondering the salvation of Western civilization. Lenin, on the other
hand, plotted its destn1ction.
On August 1, 1914, Hitler's life of books, art and solitude was sud-
denly shattered. Without the slightest hesitation he abandoned his art
and studies and cast a,vay everything in his then civilian life as a 1nirac-
ulously healed paralytic 1night throw off his crutches:
"To be able finally to prove before God the sincerity of 1ny convic-
tions was a tn.1e blessing. I also knew that when the tin1e crone, an inner
voice would show me the way."
In Hitler's view, the war would set everytlling to rights. In combat,
only character would count. "A board chainnan is on equal footing with
a dog clipper when they go in the army." The petty alld avaricious bour-
geois Vt1orld he held in conte1npt would be swept away. "For me it was
a deliverance. I run not ashruned to say it today: I fell on 1ny knees and
ti1anked God."
l\fillions of Europeans all across Europe would feel the srune way.
"To Berlin!" shouted tile French. "To Paris!" shouted the Gennans. In
tllose days of whipped up patriotism worker and peasant alike were
at a fever pitch. But with Hitler, it was much 1nore tha11 a 1nere e1no-
tional outpouring; it was the bursting upon him of the conviction that
the German people, artificially divided between Gennans a11d Austri-
ans, would be reunited at last by the war.
Ordinarily, Hitler should not even have been a soldier. For 1nany
years he had been afflicted with tuberculosis, and just a few months be-
fore the war, on Feb. 5, 1914, he had applied for military service and
been turned away: "Unfit for tile army or auxiliary corps. Too weak.
Rejected."
He did everything in his power to overturn tltls decision. On Aug. 3,
1914, he sent a letter to the king of Bavaria begging to be allowed to en-
list as a volunteer. His prayer was answered, and he was accepted into
tile army. He joined the 6tll battalion of tile 2nd Bavarian Infantry Reg-
iment. His comrade Hans Mend later recalled that when Hitler was is-
sued his rifle, "He gazed on it witl1 the same pleasure a wo1nan takes
in contemplating her diamonds." A few hours before leaving for the
front, Hitler exclaimed: "I am very happy."
THE UNKNO\VN SOLDIER I 33
As their transport train passed the great statue of Germania on the

Rhine, on October 1914, Hitler and his comrades in arms intoned the
ancient battle song, Die Wacht am Rhein. In a letter he wrote that day
to his Munich landlady, Frau Popp, Hitler confessed, "I find it hard to
contain my enthusias1n. How many times have I wished to test my
strengtl1 and prove my national faith!"
That wish was now going to be fulfilled.
Yet Hitler was only one more foot soldier among thousands on the
train heading for the battlefields of Flanders. In the context of the times
no one in the world could have ·c onceived that this volunteer soldier,
who was not even a German nor yet a Bavarian, would rule Europe
fro1n Narvik to Maicop. Hitler, however, never doubted that the war
would seal his appointment with destiny.
Hitler would fight in all of the worst battles: Yser, Ypres, Flanders,
Neuve Chapelle, La Bassee, Arras, Artois, Somme, Fromelles, AJsace-
Lorraine, Ailette, Montdidier, Soissons, Rheims, Oise, Mame, Cham-
pagne, Vosle, Monchy, Bapau1ne. All within four years. He was
wounded on Oct 5, 1916 and hospitalized for two months. Then he was
back at the front until Oct. 15, 1918 when he had to be hospitalized
again, this time for gas poisoning.
Throughout the war he was cited for valor and distinguished con-
duct in the field. He was awarded the Iron Cross, 2nd class; the Bavar-
ian Military Medal, 3rd class witl1 bar; the Iron Cross, 1st class. While
both officers and men acquired great respect for his heroism and self-
lessness, Hitler's only concern was that he 1night have done more.
By 1918, the First World War was drawing to an end. The German
anny in co1nbination with Lenin and Trotsky had destroyed Russia.
Gen. Erich Ludendorff, a 1nilitary genius, was able to redeploy his
troops from the East to the West and inflict blow after blow against the
Blitish and French troops during tl1e months of May, June and July of
1918. French historian Rayinond Cartier assessed the situation:
The Russian front was gone. All Germany's best divisions, all
the heavy artillery, all the 1nen less than 35 years old went surging
back toward the west. For the first time since tl1e beginning of
hostilities, Germany was going to have tl1e advantage of superior
nu1nbers: 192 divisions against 174 on tlte Franco-British front
The British-led Entente was about to collapse.
Hitler's old regiJuent, tlle Ust Regilnent, took part in tllis final offensive
from start to finish. Hitler and 11.is comrades advanced victoriously1 cro~
ing the Ailette River at Anizy, tlle Aisne at Pont Fontenoy, and finally
reached and c~d tlle Man,e, the gateway to Paris. It was July 141 1918,
Bastille Day, tlle national holiday decreed by tl1e Grand Orient warlords
to celebrate u,e genocide tl1ey had inflicted on u,e French people a cen-
tury before, but tlle festivities were cut short as everyone grew anxious
at tlle heavy rumble of Gennan artillery hard by.
Hitler was among tl,e spearhead troops. "Corporal Hitler," Cartier
stated, "was in all probability one of the Gennan soldiers who got closest
to Paris in 1918."
In fact, Hitler nearly succeeded in pulling off tlle most sensational
coup of the war. tlle capture of Clemenceau, the French premier. In panic,
tlle Grand Orient establishment had dispatched Clemenceau to the front
to bolster the troops' morale, which was by then very low. Exhorting the
men to charge ahead, Clemenceau tried to show them the way and found
himself surrounded by Gennans. At the last moment he just managed to
get away1 barely escaping capture by a matter of minutes. Among the sol-
diers in the patrol that tllus nearly captured Clemenceau was Cpl. Adolf
Hitler. Another of history's ironies! ·
One can imagine Clemenceau brought into the List Regiment camp
by Corporal Hitler. Instead of posturing as "Father Victory," tlle name the
Grand Orient had cooked up for him1 he would have been just anotller de-
jected prisoner of war led to detention by none otller Ulan Hitler.
Hitler's war heroism is a matter of record and has been acknowledged
by botll the military and all his comrades in arms. Only when Hitler be-
came involved in politics was his war record suddenly challenged.
When the political hacks of tlle Weimar Republic tried to discredit
Hitler's war record in a desperate attempt to stern his rising popularity,
they were taken to court. In ajudgrnent rendered on March 10, 1932 in
Hamburg, Hitler's detractors, who included Heinrich Braune and tlle Auer
& Company enterprises, were condemned, forced to recant and to pay
damages. The transcript of the judgrnent can be found in the federal
archives at Koblenz.
After Gennany's defeat in 1945, history really belonged to tlle victors,
and the political "historians" had a field daY, saying anything and every-
thing against Hitler.
It has taken more than half a century for real historians to set the
THE UNKNOWN SOLDIER I 35
record straight once again for the sake of integrity and historical truth.
One tl1ing certain and indisputable is that Hitler spent his four years
of war in the front lines. He took part in more than forty battles, and he
was wom1ded and gassed; so his medals were hard-earned: his Iron Cross
2nd Class (on Dec. 2, 1914), his Cross of Military Merit, a special decora-
tion conferred upon the wounded; and finally his Iron Cross 1st Class.
Lt. Col. Michael Freiherr von Godin, in his official request that Hitler
be awarded the Iron Cross 1st Class, stated: "He was a model of coolness
and courage in both trench warfare and assault co1nbat. He was always
ready to volunteer for carrying messages in the most difficult and danger-
ous situations."
Col. Anton Tubeuf, who made the presentation to Hitler of the above
decoration, which is only very rarely awarded to enlisted men or to cor-
porals, further stated:
He was always ready to help out in any situation, always vol-

unteered for the most difficult, tl1e most arduous and the most
dangerous missions, and to risk his life and well-being for the Fa-
therland. On a hu1nan level, I felt closer to h.hn than to any of the
other men.
Col. Walter Spatny, in con11nand of the 16th Regiinent, was no less af-
flnnative: "Hitler inspired all his comrades. They were ilnpressed by his
peerless courage and devotion to duty, particularly in combat. His quali-
fications, modesty and his adlnirable sobriety eained hiin the greatest re-
spect of his co1nrades and superiors alike."
In 1922, at a time when Hitler was still unknown, Gen. Friedrich Petz
sunlmarized the High Command's appreciation of the gallant and self-ef-
facing corporal as follows: "Hitler was quick in mind and body ai1d had
great powers of endurance. His most remarkable qualities were the per-
sonal courage and daring which enabled him to face any con1bat or per-
ilous situation whatsoever."
None of the officers who reported Hitler's war record had at tl1e tune
any otl1er motivation than that of stating the truth. TI1ey were m1der no
pressure and offered no advantage to state otl1erwise. That is why profes-
sional historians now base their evaluation of Hitler's war record on this
wide selection of testimony from army records.
Even the historians least favorable to Hitler, such as Joachiin C. Fest,
concede tJ1at "Hitler was a courageous and efficient soldier and was al-
ways a good comrade." Sebastian Haffner, a Jewish writer and a fanatical
Hitler hater, was forced to admit that, "Hitler had a fierce courage un-
mat.ched by anyone at the thne or since."
After tl1e failed atte1npts to discredit Hitler during the period of the
Weintar Republic, his war record was unchallenged even by the Jewish
and British propaganda machines. His readiness to help others was so
noted during tl1e war was tllus nothing new. A Jew by the name of Karl
Hanisch, who was a fellow lodger of Hitler's at an inn one time, recalled
him as a pleasant and likeable man who took an interest in the welfare of
all his companions.
"No one ventured to take liberties witll Hitler," Hanisch later related,
"but he was neitller proud nor arrogant, and he was always available and
willing to help. If someone needed 50 hellers to pay for another night,s
lodging, Hitler would give whatever he had in his pocket without another
thought On several occasions I personally saw him take the initiative and
pa$ tile hat for such a collection."
At the front he never tried to impress anyone. He was friendly to all.
Various photographs of Hitler at the front show him happily sharing a
meal or time of rest with his comrades. One aspect of his character, how-
ever, set him apart from his fellows: his politeness. Amid all the swearing
and gutter language of the trenches, his speech remained measured and
polite. That was his nature, and it was impossible for him to be otherwise
whether in speech or writing.
He believed rudeness was the deatll of communication and the
supreme insult Yet he did not reproach anyone else for rude or obscene
utterances otller than by a stem look. He never laughed at dirtyjokes and
never took part in the brothel humor and endless discussion of sexual
exploits that were common currency in those days of war. Instinctively
he shUIUled undue familiarity and was offended by it in others. One would
expect that Hitler must have been taunted mercilessly as a prude in such
an environment, yet it was not so. Somehow, he earned a respect that
men seldom grant to other men.
Historians have often remarked that in material possessions Hitler
was born poor and died poor. He regarded money only as a servant, for
the fulfillment of humanity>s needs, and never as a master. In Vienna or at
the front, his generosity was proverbial. He was always ready to give half
his rations to a soldier who appeared hungrier than he was. He also gave
out his own blankets because he felt others needed them more than he
did. Yet he was probably the most deprived member of the regiment. He
never received food parcels and had only his own meager rations to offer.
And just as he always helped people in need, he always showed compas-
sion for animals and plants. He felt they were all an integral part of the
great wheel of life and should be loved and respected. Human hannony
with the animal and plant world was a topic he often raised with me.
One day in the trenches Hitler came upon a terrier that in chasing a rat
had passed from the English trenches into the Gennan sector. He adopted
the little dog, named it Fuschl, and showered it with attention. He taught
the dog to take shelter on command and made sure it always had food
and water. The two were constant companions. Then the dog was stolen
from him. Aquarter of a century lat.er he still could not speak of it without
sorrow. He suffered more from that than from the cold and hunger and
appalling conditions of the trenches. The Hollywood version of a cruel
and maniacal Hitler was creat.ed for war propaganda purposes but was to-
tally devoid of truth.
At first, Hitler's eagerness to volunteer for the most desperate mis-
sions was puzzling to the other men. They thought he was overdoing it
and at first would say, "Just because Hitler's an idiot is no reason we
should be." But their mocking puzzlement was soon replaced by a re-
spectful awe, and they became convinced that some special fate pro-
tected him. In moments of great fear, when death was striking on all
sides, other soldiers instinctively clung near to him, for 10 times he had
escaped death when he should have been killed.
Cartier cites a very precise case: "On Nov. 17, 1917, just outside
Wytschaete, a British shell penetrated into a cellar that was being used by
Hitler's regiment as a command post and exploded there, resulting in hor-
rible carnage. All the occupants were killed or wounded and maimed.
Hitler alone was spared. Only seconds before the explosion he had been
sent to carry a message under a hail of enemy fire. He delivered the mes-
sage unscathed."
The times Hitler cheated death became a legend that has baffled his-
torians ever since. Hitler defied the odds so many times it is difficult to
consider it mere chance. Little is known about the forces that seem to
shield predestined men from danger and death. But they were always
recognized as fact by our Keltic and Gennanic ancestors, and they are
very much recognized by Asian and Arabic peoples today. In any event,
these forces were to protect Hitler all his life.

hl Nove1nber 1939 he finished a speech in Munich three 1nhlutes ahead
of schedule. After he had gone fro1n tl1e podiu1n a bo1nb exploded. As if
in ans,ver to a secret sununons, he had left just in ti1ne to escape being
blown to pieces.
On July 20, 1944, Claus von Stauffenberg's tilne bomb was placed, in
a briefcase, right beside Hitler's feet in his headquarters briefing room.
The nian sitting next to Hitler tl1ought it a rude tl1ing to do and moved it
away. Witl1out this siinple gesture Hitler would have been blown to bits.
As it happened, tlle bon1b only managed to tear up Hitler's clothing.
Hitler did not panic for an mstant "It's a British bo1nb. The flash was
yellow," he casually remarked as if his own fate were not worth talking
about
Historians have often adverted to this pattern of Hitler's survival dur-
ing the First World War. In 1916 the Battle of the Sonune was the scene
of the slaughter of more tl1an a nilllion Europeans, mostly French and
Gemlan5. The List Regiment was holding out an1ong tl1e rums of a village
called Le Barque. Out of nine couriers, seven had just been killed. The
trenches had been destroyed w1der constant bombard1nent, and the
troops were holed up here and there in the shell craters. TI1e cormnand
post, comprising 10 officers and two couriers, was located in the cellar of
a flattened house. Suddenly a British bomb fell at tl1e entrance and killed
11 of the 12; the swvivor was Hitler.
Hitler himself told the noted EnglishjoumalistAndrew Price of asiin-
Uar incident: "My comrades and I were eating our rations in a trench. All
of a sudden it seen1ed that a voice was telling me, 'get up and get out of
here.' It was an order so clear and msistent that I obeyed it automatically,
as if it had been a military order. I got to my feet immediately and walked
some 20 meters down the trench, carrying my meal witl1 me in my mess
tin. Then, my mind now at ease, I sat down to finish my meal. No sooner
had I done so than there was a terrible explosion in the same part of the
trench I had just left. A stray grenade had burst above the group of men
with whom I had been sitting, and all of them had been ldlled."
John Toland also wondered what fate protected Hitler: "In the course
of the preceding months he had escaped death on innumerable occa-
sions. It was as if he had been wearing a good luck charm or had been a
sorcerer." [Note: this translation twice removed, from English to Gennan
to English, is no doubt far from authentic Toland.-Ed.)
Even Joachim Fest was struck by the strangeness of Hitler's immunity:

"The courage and the composure with which he faced the most deadly
fire made him seem invulnerable to his comrades. As long as Hitler is
near us, nothing will happen to us, they kept repeating. It appears that
made a deep impression on Hitler and reinforced his belief that he had
been charged with a special mission."
Corporal Hitler never ceased to astonish his comrades. He was always
polite and helpful, never panicked, was always there when death struck,
, always survived, and whenever he had some free time he could be seen
_.., scribbling so1nething: Hitler was writing poetry. While some 700 pieces of
Hitler's paintings and drawings managed to survive destruction after
World War II, his poems did not fare so well. Most of them disappeared
in 1945 along with mountains of other stolen documents. Only 30 out of
2,000 have survived. Some ended up in the U.S. Congressional Archives
in Washington. One poem composed in 1915 in a trench during the night
was prophetic:
Often in tlle night.s of bitterness/ I see the oak of Wotan sur-

rounded by a silent lightning / Forging a union with mystical
forces. /The Moon in its bewitching magic inscribes runes. /Those
who during the day were soiled / Become purified by this magic
fomulla. /Thus the false are separated from the genuine/ And I ar-
rive at a phalanx of swords.
His comrades had no idea that Hitler was writing poetry; let alone po-
etry of such depth. He kept his poems in his bag and never talked about
them. When Hitler talked, it was to comment on such topics as defeatism
and ofJews ensconced in plush offices back home sabotaging the war ef-
fort with strikes and subversion. He wanted to fire the1n all.
In tlle drab and deadly war of the trenches Hitler entertained his com-
rades with sketches and caricatures he could draw in a matter of seconds.
He could appreciate the humor in any situation and created a much
needed relief ainong the troops.
On days when he was off duty or during a combat lull Hitler painted
scenes of the war's devastation as well as scenes of serene peace. The
contrast was striking: on the one hand burned trees, torn bodies, trenches
that had become mass graves; on tlle other, pastoral scenes of wheat
fields, rivers, farm houses recalling the art of Poussin.
Hitler historian Werner Maser has described them:
The buildings, perceived horizontally, are striking in their lu-

minous delicacy of color shading. The watercolor titled Hau-
bourdin that is dated 1916 is an enchantment: seen from the
perspective of a Gennan landscape painter, the foreign scene
here becomes an experience that is intimate, familiar, alive and
poetic. You would believe yourself to be within the walls of
Nuremberg or Rothenburg. The art is light, animated, moving.
The splendid drawing Ardoye en Flarulre, which dates from the
summer of 1917, is part of a group with two other plates that
are not dated, Shelter at 7bunes and House with a White Fence.
All these works reveal exceptional architectural attainments
and talent
England's own great artist Edward Gordon Craig is no less laudatory:

"Hitler's watercolors of the First World War are artistic works of real
value." The experts and collectors of today who vie to acquire Hitler's
works at enonnous prices certainly confinn Craig's assessment
The men at the front generally were only interested in sketches of
them.5elves that Hitler gave them to send their families. There was one
man, nevertheless, who stole Hitler's leather case in which he carefully
kept all his drawin~, sketches and watercolors. Years later all the works
it contained reappeared in a curio shop in Munich. An admirer bought
them and sent them to Hitler, who by then had become the chancellor of
Gennany.
Hitler's comrades from the war, however, above all remembered his
impromptu bursts of oratory. The men always listened and never missed
a word. Asign of thin~ to come.
CHAPTER
lESSONS FROM THE FRONT
rom 1914 to 1919, the front would become Hitler's second

field of observation. No longer is he, as in Vienna, a n1ere
spectator. He is thrown in with millions of men all subject
to the same laws as himself. With them he must share not
only combat, but every minute of everyday life in warthne.
Hitler, always prim and proper, must sub1nit to tltis gigantic pro1nis-
cuity, this massed mingling of persons. He does so willingly and feels
himself co1npletely one with his people. Instinctively he knows his fate
is linked with theirs.
He lives the brotl1erhood of men who share hardship, suffering, fear
and the constant nearness of death. It is a brotherhood that is strength-
ened by each passing day of war, giving rise to the kind of solidarity
that since Vienna he had felt was a prin1ary political necessity. He now
realizes that men are basically team workers and that class warfare is
utterly against hu1nan nature. He sees 1nen who only a few weeks be-
fore were hurled against one anotl1er by their Marxist handlers, now
harmoniously working side by side.
Hitler reasons that if all classes of society can be so naturally united
when facing sacrifice at the front, they certainly could be united in
work and national salvation back home.
He also observes that mental and physical work are incomplete by
themselves and can never be separated. The physical worker must be
guided by thought, as the mental worker must rely on physical power
in order to achieve anything. This is the crux of an hnmense social

problent that Hitler sees resolved at the front This revelation will be
imprinted in him forever. He is part of the people and understands its
great potential.
If men can live united in tl1e trenches, why should they be disunited
in civilian life? 1b this Hitler already has the answer. Disunity and dis-
cord are artificially engineered by social parasites to the massive detri-
ment of the majority of the people.
Hitler concluded that all so-called social warfare-employees
against employers, generation against generation, gender against gen-
der-is fomented by corrupt and greedy manipulators only bent on en-
slaving the people. Any type of class warfare goes against the very
fabric of humanity: goes against both the rights of the individual and of
the community. No society can exist without the unity and cooperation
of its members. Hitler also reflects that class warfare never benefited
any of the parties manipulated into such conflicts. It was a total loss for
the country, the people, the individuals, and even the manipulators,
who invariably find themselves ruling over a society in rubble.
Hitler's faith in popular sovereignty, unity and brotherhood was
born at the front He is a democrat in the purest sense of the word.
Hitler told me he had learned more at the front than he would have
studying at universities for thirty years. The front is a fountain of lmow-
ledge without equal. For Hitler, knowing and understanding human be-
ings had to precede all other knowledge. Scientific knowledge would
naturally follow in the path established by human psychology.
If Hitler later received such overwhelming support from the people,
it was only because he had the knowledge of every fiber of human psy-
chology which he acquired at the front
The qualities that earned him the respect of his comrades in arms
were still the same when later he addressed crowds of millions: He
was at one with the people. He never had to use bombastic and empty
political jargon. Every word he uttered hit home. He really spoke for
the people.
The front also gave Hitler that which would be his supreme strength
during the conquest of power and afterwards, when he had become
chancellor: his sense of authority. Nothing great can be achieved with-
out the strength of character of the one in command, the one who can
think and motivate and take responsibility. Without firm authority, not
LESSONS FROM THE FRONT I 43
a single trench would hold out: and without a stable and lasting com-
mand, no far-reaching plans, either offensive or defensive, would even
be conceivable. The one who commands and those who obey must
constitute but a single force. Decisions must always be in the hands of
one given the authority, the responsibility and the time to realize them.
Authority, responsibility, continuity. These were the lessons Hitler
learned at the front, and these were the basis of the new social order
Hitler would establish.
Civic life, public order, social justice, and the uniting of the classes,
all subject to the same laws. The best must plan and direct and inspire
with faith a consenting people to implement the plan. This is a sacred
covenant without which no society can long exist. A society based on
such principles will prosper and survive any peril. This is the democ-
racy of excellence, not of mediocrity, when millions are freely giving
their hearts and minds to the one who incarnates them.
Joachim Fest confirms the knowledge Hitler acquired during the
war: War was the major element in Hitler's formative period. It was an
experience of a purely metaphysical order and one he totally accepted.
More than any military academy lectures, the war also taught Hitler
the great laws of tactics. He saw how men fear and how that fear could
be overcome by willpower. That courage is first of all not physical but
moral. It is strengtl1 of character which instills value in a human being.
Hundreds of times he witnessed the effects of panic: At the mere loom-
ing shape of a tank or even the sound of one in the distance, soldiers
would be gripped with fear, ready to throw away their guns and flee.
Hitler observed how during these critical minutes a real leader
could avert panic: He had the ability to convey in seconds that a head-
long retreat of a quarter of a mile would mean certain death, since the
enemy tanks would overtake them in minutes and they would then be
defenseless.
Long after the First World War, in December 1941, if the German
troops on the threshold of Moscow had withdrawn full tilt when
weather of 30 to 40 degrees below zero struck, as some panicky
Wehrmacht generals wanted to do. What would they have found 300
kilometers farther to the west? Exactly the same freezing cold! And
with no contingency position left after having lost all their artillery and
tanks in the snow and ice even before undertaking their retreat To re-
treat is often to commit suicide.
Hitler had learned in tl1e school of World War I that the n1an who
wins, in co1nbat or in political warfare, is tl1e one who has the initiative,
who has decided on his goal worked out his tactics, and hangs on to
every gain: whereas tl1e one under attack, caught short and generally
hit at his weakest point, is at the bold one's 1nercy.
AnoU1er capital discovery Hitler would 1nake at tl1e school of the
front was tl1e power of propaganda
From 1914 to 1918 Gem1an propaganda was disastrously null. The
Allies, on the other hand, showed the1nselves to be 1nasters in the use
of tl1e new weapon. Perhaps it contributed 1nore to their victory than
the new tanks and tl1e 1nillions of stalwart lads pouring in fro1n faraway
A1nerica in 1918.
The anti-Gem1an propaganda was incessant, relentless and in well-
nigh apocalyptic bad faith.
The Germans had no sooner crossed Belgium than the legend was
launched and spread worldwide that German soldiers were savagely
cutting off the hands of Belgian children. This was a total lie. Not a sin-
gle child, Belgian or otherwise, was ever mutilated by German soldiers
in the entire four years of the war. To say tl1e least, it is incredible that
so fantastic a lie could have been echoed to the very ends of the earth
with no proof of any kind ever having been provided.
After the ,var, when Germany lay defeated and prostrate, with what
cries of indignation would not the little victims have been brought forth
if there had been any. None ever appeared, and the British quietly
dropped the story-without, of course, apologizing for its monstrous
mendacity.
The legend of the "cut-off hands,,, along with that of babies thrown
on bayonets and Red Cross nurses being shot by firing squads, was fed
to the world for four entire years. It proved a powerful tool for gener-
ating hatred of Germany and all things German.
Another form of psychological warfare consisted in dropping "news
from home" into the German trenches. The "news" described the mis-
ery gripping Germany, where babies had to be clothed in wrapping
paper; the dead could not be buried in coffins because of a wood short--
age, where people were staJ:ving, etc. The sheer repetition of this phony
"news from home" had a definite impact on many exhausted soldiers.
This type of propaganda warfare was an innovation at the time and
certainly caught the Germans unprepared.
Hitler told 1ne how stunned he was when he read those leaflets and
kept asking, "Where is our own propaganda or at any rate our counter-
propaganda?" The material certainly was not lacking. The German air
force could have dropped truthful leaflets on the Allied trenches, de-
scribing for tl1e soldiers how their vainglorious generals had sacrificed
1nore than a 1nillion young men at the Somme, in Artois, and at the
Chemin des Dames, just to conquer and then lose again a few hundred
meters of ground; how their comrades lying dead between tl1e trenches
were being devoured by thousands of rats; how Allied soldiers were
sent to their death after being filled with liquor; how politicians and
generals were tearing at each other's throats back home; how the huge
shells of Big Bertha were falling right in the middle of Paris.
And what would have been the impact of the real news that Russia,
the principal partner of the Allies, was in the throes of a violent revo-
lution and that St. Petersburg had fallen to the Communists, ··w hich
meant that German divisions brought back from the East would join
the Western Front and outnu1nber the Allied forces? There was a
wealth of material of devastating potential available without the need
of a single lie, contrary to British propaganda.
The Germany of Wilhelm II was totally ignorant of propaganda and
fought the war only with guns and cannon. If Germany lost the First
World War, it was mostly for not having used war's most powerful ar-
tillery: propaganda. That would be another lesson Hitler would never
forget.
Hitler's bursts of indignation always had an attentive audience in
the trenches. "Hitler's comrades," John Toland wrote, "were transfixed
by his eloquence and loved to listen to him."
His co1nrades affectionately called him Ali and generally agreed that
Hitler "lived in a world apart but that in every way he was a good man,"
as one soldier explained.
Hitler talked about bourgeois selfishness, the anarchy of imperial
power, the n1ediocrity of its bureaucrats. Yet the men recalled a
prophetic utterance he once made, "You will hear much ofme one day.
I am only waiting for my time to come."
Jacki Weiss, a fellow soldier, later told me: "We used to say that
young Hitler might become a deputy of the Bavarian Landtag, but no
one ever imagined he would one day be chancellor of the Reich."
In the opinion of Hitler's coffilnanding officers, he was a superior
soldier. Why tl1en in four years of outstanding service was he not made
an officer? He had been promoted to corporal in December 1914, and
on Nov. 11, 1918 he would still be a corporal. Why? This was the same
n,an who would prove to be the greatest military genius of the twenti-
etll century, who between 1939 and 1942 would send his armies to con-
quer Europe from Oslo to Moscow, from Amsterdam to Athens, from
Paris to tlle Caucasus Mountains.
Yet Hitler remained one of 400,000 corporals throughout the war
despit.e his constant heroism and more than 40 combat citations.
Not unlike tlle Viennese professors who had kept Hitler out of art
school, the officers kept him out of the commissioned ranks. The offi-
cial reason: He lacked the ability to command.
A graphologist to whom a letter written by Hitler in 1916 was sub-
mitted for examination-without his having the slightest idea of who
had written the letter-report.ed as follows:
"The author of this letter is endowed with great intelligence and a
remarkable ability to assimilate knowledge and to adapt to any given
situation. He represents a real power."
Hitler's commanding officer, however. Lt. Wiedemann, summarily
excluded Hitler with the verdict, "lacks capacity to command."
Is it possible that just as in Vienna, the ensconced bureaucratic
mediocrities could sense Hitler's talent and excluded him because of
it? Talent and int.elligence have always been the nightmare of tenured
time-serving officials of any type. How many geniuses have been sup-
pressed by such mediocrities?
For his part, Hitler made no response to this injustice. Garnering
stripes on his sleeve was of no interest to him. He loved his dangerous
job as a courier, and his agenda lay elsewhere. Such mediocre pettiness
would be done away witll anyhow in the program he was planning for
Gennany.
Near the end of 1916 Hitler was wounded with shrapnel and was
hospitalized at the Beelitz hospital in Berlin. Two years later, after he
had been gassed and awarded the Iron Cross First Class for valor,
Hitler was sent, against his will, back to Germany. From these two
short visits Hitler came back to tlle front appalled and sickened.
Life in Gennany from 1916 t.o 1918 was far from comfortable. There
were severe food shortages, and everything was rationed. But com-
pared witll the soldiers who were facing death 24 hours a day and had
to supplement their starvation rations with rats they caught in the

trenches, people in Gennany could still go home at night and sleep
peacefully; no one was being blown to pieces or crushed by tanks into
barbed wire.Yet it was this relatively privileged life at ho1ne that would
bring Germany's defeat.
Marxist financiers saw the war as their great opportunity: While
millions of patriotic Germans were away fighting, the Communists
would take over Germany with their hired gangs of agitators. At first
their subversion was cautious, because the entire Gennan people were
fervently patriotic, and mock concern was shown for the people's hard-
ship. Then agitators were sent to factories where they incited the work-
ers to go on strike. They were duplicating the methods that had just
destroyed Russia's war capabilities in Petrograd in October 1917. De-
spite this well-financed and widespread sabotage, Germany managed
to hold out except in its capital, Berlin, which had the highest concen-
tration of alien Marxist agitators. On Jan. 28, 1918, strikes were insti-
gated that halted essential munitions factories for a week: 400.000
workers struck.
It was then that the soldiers fighting heroically at the front realized
that saboteurs were stabbing them in the back.
The internal sabotage of Germans coincided with Gem1an military
successes abroad. Russia was out of the war thanks to Marxist sabo-
tage. The same Communists who had destroyed Russia's army were
now defenseless against the German arn1y. They capitulated and signed
the Treaty of Brest-Litovsk on March 3, 1918. Gennan victories had cre-
ated a whole new world to the East. Countries like Finland, the Baltic
States, Byelorussia, Crimea and Ukraine had govern1nents friendly to
Germany and totally opposed to Comnn1nis1n. The wealth and poten-
tial of the East was opened to Gennan develop1nent. The stakes on the
Western Front were minuscule compared with the East. It was Ger-
many's future which was assured when Germany established diplo-
matic relations with a Russia reduced by half.
Gen. Ludendorf was rushing hundreds of thousands of soldiers
fro1n the East to the Western Front to overwhehn the Allies. Germany
had never been closer to total victory than in the spring of 1918.
It was at this precise 1no1nent that the financiers of Coffilnunism in-
tensified their subversion campaign inside Germany. A tired and anx-
ious civilian population was an easy prey for the professional
subversives such as the Llebknechts, the Luxemburgs, and the Eisners.

All were Jews as were their handlers and fellow agitators from New
York to Moscow. In the context of German society in 1918 this invasion
of ruthless alien subversives bent on destroying the country from
,vithin was a totally new experience, against which good-natured and
naive Germans were defenseless.
Hitler had already deemed organized Jewry to be a grave threat to
any country when he witnessed the greed and ruthlessness of the Jew-
ish invasion of Vienna. While he was in the hospital in Berlin, he had
also witnessed how Jewish agitators were trying to demoralize conva-
lescing soldiers, giving them instructions in how to malinger out the
war. New recruits were demoralized with defeatist propaganda.
Hitler also noticed how many able-bodied young German Jews were
comfortably sitting out the war in administrative positions while at the
same time lending support to the Jewish Communist agitators. This
outrage was echoed by Ludendorf: "It is imperative that we effect a
much more vigorous recruiting of the young Jews, who up to now have
been left altogether too undisturbed."
Ludendorf was right, inasmuch as proportionately twice as many
Germans as Jews died at the front.
Hitler was also revolted by the spectacle of Jews making fortunes
out of the black market and other war profiteering enterprises. While
German blood was flowing at the front, Jews were getting rich at home
and destroying the country with their Communist terrorists. Hitler was
so outraged he could hardly speak except to utter, "They're in the
process of making us lose the war; they're stabbing the country in the
back."
This feeling of being stabbed in the back was shared by many other
Germans who had witnessed what Hitler had seen. It was also shared
by non-Germans such as British Gen. Sir Frederick Maurice, who said
virtually the same thing in a Daily News article subsequent to 1918; or
French historian Raymond Cartier, who wrote, with respect to how the
back-stabbing was felt throughout Gennany, that Hindenburg, Otto Di-
belius, head of the Evangelical Church, and Cardinal Faulhaber of Mu-
nich all agreed that Gennany had been stabbed in the back." The
stabbing, or Dolchst.oss as it was known in Germany, was also com-
pounded by the British and Jewish railroading of America into the war.
John Toland describes Hitler's indignation and call for justice to avenge
the "rivers of German blood."

During the first seven months of 1918, despite the sabotage at home,
Gennany was within an inch of winning the war. Marshal Foch, com-
mander-in-chief of the Allied forces, admitted on July 15, 1918: "If
Rheims falls, we have lost the war." Rheims was indeed the last point
of Allied resistance. Because it was so near to victory, Germany felt
the full impact of Jewish sabotage and the iajection of a million Amer-
ican soldiers on the Allied side. Although the odds had shifted, German
soldiers fought with unmatched heroism and tenacity and held the new
Allied onslaught at a standstill. Raymond Cartier honestly admitted:
"Nowhere was the German front broken. The Allies met with stubborn
resistance everywhere. Captain von Helldorf, designated as interpreter
at the Spa armistice talks, took 48 hours to cross the lines because Ger-
man infantrymen would not cease fire. Only the absolute proof that an
armistice had been signed induced the soldiers to cease fire, and they
were still incredulous."
Hitler would not see these last few weeks of WWI in the trenches.
Just a month before, during the night of Oct. 13, 1918, the British
dropped thousands of mustard gas bo1nbs on Hitler's regiment at Wer-
wick, near Ypres in Flanders. At dawn some 400 blindmen were wan-
dering with raised anns, their eyes burning as if hot coals had pierced
them. Hitler was one of them.
He was transported to the Pasewalk hospital in Pomerania, where
he was pronounced blind. He recovered, but there would be some who
would try to use this tragic iajury against him. A general by the name
of von Bredow, consumed with social and political hatred of Hitler,
stated in pseudo medical jargon that Hitler "suffered from blindness
hysteria." This nonsense was later picked up by the German Jewish
"experts" on whom American intelligence depended to formulate Amer-
ican policy. In the National Archives in Washington can be found a
"medical report" by a Jewish doctor named Kroner certifying the "psy-
chopathy" of the blind Hitler to be "mental inferiority, generally condi-
tioned by heredity, and marked especially by wealrness of the will."
Another Jewish doctor, Rudolph Binion of Brandeis University, not
to be outdone, sank into Freudian ramblings wherein he traced the
source of Hitler's mustard gas blinding to the odor of iodine present a
quarter of a century earlier in the room where his mother lay dying.
That tincture of iodine rising in his memory had rendered him insane!
50 I HITLER DEMOCHAT
''That mustard gas," Binion wrote, "was an aton1ized liquid that burned
the skin in tJ1e saine way tl1at iodofonn does. Hitler associated that poi-
son gas witJ1 his motJ1er's iodofonn when she was dying. When he was
hospitalized at Pasewalk he n1ust have been delirious and later given
psychiatric treattnent."
It is not surprising that tl1e United States govenunent, fed such in-
telligence, was considered a pushover to be manipulated into two
world wars by tl1e Jewish and British wannongers.
The world had to wait until 1973 for these absurdities to be de-
bunked finally by Gennan historian Wen1er Maser, in his Hitler's Let-
ters and Notes: "Assertions completely without foundation. Irrefutable
documents prove tllat Hitler's te1nporary blindness was the conse-
quence of poisoning by enemy gas. On Nov. 9, 1918 three young Jews
burst into the Pasewalk hospital and triu1nphantly announced that the
Gennany of Wilhelm II was collapsing. Hitler heard the news with
agony and, still blind, regained his bed. He pulled the blanket over his
face and cried silently for hours: His country, his Fatherland lay pros-
trate, destroyed, perhaps forever.
Everytlling tllat had filled his mind and soul tllrough the years, and
that had hitherto found no outlet but in his harangues in the trenches,
now rose up again in his heart. It was no longer possible for him to be
passive. The struggle would continue in the only conceivable way left:
Henceforward it would be moved from tile trenches to the streets.
"All or notlling." he vowed. "I decided to become a political man."
"On that night," John Toland has written, "in the lonely ward of the
Pasewalk hospital, the most prodigious force in the 20th century was
bom"
CHAPTER
THEDEBAClE
itler would perhaps one day be "the most prodigious force

in the 20th century," but meanwhile he was nothing, and
he knew it. "Having no name, I was least of all in a posi-
tion to carry out any kind of useful action." "No one had
so few means, nor so insignificant a beginning," wrote
Joachim Fest Hitler felt lonelier than he had ever been. Lonelier than
in Vienna, because he had not yet formulated a political plan.
On Nov. 21, 1918, beginning to recover his sight, he left the hospital
for his Munich barracks.
Alone and friendless, what chance did he have to save Germany?
Certainly none at this stage, and he was not even a German.
What political prograin could you present anyhow to Germans who
were struggling merely to survive? People were dying of hunger, and
millions of veterans were unemployed.
Not surprisingly, those responsible for the famine and unemploy-
ment were now exploiting the situation. On Nov. 10, 1918 two separate
republics were proclahned in Berlin. One was headed by a bourgeois
socialist nained Scheidemann and the other by the Communist Jew
Liebknecht.
Liebknecht also headed a terrorist group of Communist shock
troops known as Spartacus. On that same day the Spartacists attacked
the returning veteran officers, many of them wounded, ripping off their
medals and epaulettes. It was the triumph of the revolution.
All the former pillars of the Imperial Reich who could still have
saved the day were instead seized with panic and stampeded out of the
Reichstag. Streseman, the conservative chief, locked himself in his of-
fice, stricken with fear. It took the economist Schacht to persuade Stre-
seman to come out and join the revolution: "The game is being played
on the left, and on the left we must play. Let's create a left-wing bour-
geois party." Streseman grasped the suggestion and, with Schacht and
otl1er bourgeois opportunists, formed the German Democratic Party
(DDP). The same Schacht and the same DDP would just as quickly
switch to Hitler when the National Socialists came to power in 1933.
From November of 1918 to February of 1919 the Germans are ter-
rorized by Communist thugs. Powerless, Hitler witnesses the ransack-
ing of Munich by the thugs of Jewish Communist boss Eisner.
In Berlin the Communists massacre more than ten thousand people
in two months. The Communists, led by Jewish fanatics, are on the
rampage throughout Germany.
Finally, salvation comes from Gustav Noske, a woodcutter by trade
and a socialist in politics but at the same time a patriot at heart. Single-
handedly he assembles a small number of volunteers and veterans,
arms them with whatever weapons he can find and confronts the Com-
munists head on in the streets of Berlin. The patriots fight furiously
against superior Marxist forces. Miraculously, they reconquer Berlin.
Thousands of dead Communist thugs litter the streets, including the
Jewish bosses Liebknecht and Luxemburg.
Unfortunately, Noske cannot be everywhere, and the Marxist ram-
page continues in the rest of Germany. In Bremen, Oldenburg,
Brunswick, Hamburg, in the Ruhr and in Saxony, terror is rampant. But
it is in Munich that terror reigns supreme. There, a Marxist madman,
unclean, hairy, and an extravagant orator, seizes power and installs
himself in the palace of the king of Bavaria, who has fled in panic. Kurt
Eisner becomes dictator of Bavaria and orders the massacre of Bavar-
ians. He also forges documents "proving Germany's guilt for WWI" and
sends them to Versailles. .
Eisner declares war against Wuertemberg and Switzerland. Finally,
after months of bloody pandemonium, a young Bavarian officer 22
years of age risks his life and shoots the tyrant dead. The Bavarians
acclaim him a hero, but the respite is short-lived. Lenin immediately
dispatches three other Jewish dictators to replace the fallen Eisner:
THE DEBACLE I 53
Lewien, Levine, and Axelrod. They are the troika of the Soviet Republic
of Bavaria Fro1n Lenin and Trotsky co1ne these orders: "Triple wages,
move workers into the rich districts, cancel the food ration cards of
all non-workers."
The "workers" in question are not workers but street thugs re-
cruited by the Jewish commissars. Thus Lewien, Levine and Axelrod
decide who is and who is not a worker. They proceed to massacre the
educated, who are classified as "bourgeois." On 29 April 1919 Countess
Westcarp and the prince of Thum and Taxis are herded along with 20
other "class criminals" into an army barracks and summarily shot.
Lenin's Cheka chief, Lat.sis, tells Lewien, Levine and Axelrod: "We are
elilninating the bourgeoisie as a class. You don't need to prove to any-
body he has acted against the Soviet Union; just ask a suspect to what
class he belongs, where he lives, what education he has, and his trade.
His answers should seal his fate."
According to a departmental 1nemo, even bourgeois children were
to be deprived of milk coupons. Thus while "non-workers" as defined
by the Cheka are being massacred and starved to death, Lewien, Levine
and Axelrod are wallowing in nonstop gluttony and orgies at the Mu-
nich royal palace. French historian Andre Brissaud will later describe
the scenes: "While 1nisery and hunger continue to increase unabated,
arrests and sununary executions are the order of the day. Meanwhile,
the trio of 'Russians' is installed in the royal palace, where the chan1-
pagne never stops flowing and orgies with fe1nale 'prisoners' go on
until dawn." Liberal historian Cartier lruuents: "It is an unfortunate but
incontrovertible fact that the individuals who were plunging Gennany
and Bavaria into chaos were in the immense 1najority Jews."
Another French historian, Benoist-Mechin, further specifies:
Mobs brandishing red flags ... are trying to crush out the last
spark of national instinct. But these n1obs are not acting sponta-
neously. They are led by a legion of militants and agitators. And
who are they? In Berlin: Liebknecht and Luxemburg; in Munich,
Eisner, Lipp, Landauer, Toiler, Lewien, Levine and Axelrod; in
Magdeburg, Brandeis; in Dresden, Lipinsky, Geyer and F1eissner;
in the Ruhr, Markus and Levinsohn; in Bren1erhaven and Kiel,
Gn1newald and Kohn; in the Palatinate, Lilienthal and Heine; in
Latvia, Ulmanis. So many names, so many Jews.
Two other Jews, Hirsch and Heine, run Pru~ia; and three Jews in
the Reichstag, Gothein, Kohn and Zinsheimer, move to bring Field Mar-
shal von Hindenb urg to trial. Walther Rathena u, another Jew, is foreign
minister of Gennany. Benoist-Mechin adds: "The list could be extended
ad infinitu m. How can one fail to see it as a true conspiracy?n
In the same period, in Hungary Bela Kun, a Central Europea n Jew,
set up another Soviet republic , in which 25 of his 32 minister s were
Jewish.
A third French historian, Pierre So~on, is no le~ explicit: "It must
be noted that a great number of revoluti onaries of the extreme left are
Jews. This fact among others will weigh heavily on the destiny of the
Jewish minoriti es in Gennan y between the two wars. For many Ger-
mans the Jews will be associat ed with Red terror, destruct ion and an-
archy. The term Judeo-B olshevik will be widely accepted , and it is
reasonab le to believe that the associat ion derives from the memory of
the Liebkne chts, Luxemburgs, Zetkins and others."
These facts are displeas ing to some people. They also embarrass
many German s burdene d since 1945 with the accusati on of being ex-
terminat ors of Jews. But recollec tion of the throes of 1918-1919 cannot
be ignored if we mean to discover objectiv ely the sources of Gennan
anti-Semitism.
Such anti-Jewish feelings, however, long predate the war. They hark
back to a very old tradition that for centurie s had virtually been the
norm in all Western countrie s. Already in the 3rd century AD. the Is-
raelites, as they were then known, had been denounc ed by the Council
of Granada . Stresem ann himself as a student had been the spokesman
of the Neo-Ger mania moveme nt which before the war was highly crit-
ical, to say the least, of Jewish influenc e in Germany.
The sight of young German Jews comfort ably sitting out the war,
and the massacr es perpetra ted against German civilians by Jewish
Commu nists, as well as the evidence that the Communist leaders were
almost all Jewish, did little to endear the Jews to the Gennans.
If the German s did not much like Jewish ways before the war, they
still had a policy of live and let live. But after the war Germans in the
great majority were outraged by what they had seen and suffered.
When Hitler denounc ed Jewish-C ommuni st sabotage and massacres
he was only echoing the people's outrage. There was not a single Ger-
man family that had not suffered from atrocitie s caused by the Jews.
THE DEBACLE I 55
Even the most craven Weimar politicians denounced the Jewish

Communists as alien vultures from the East clawing at a prostrate Ger-
many. In 1920 the socialist interior minister received the following re-
port-recorded in Dr. Schacht's memoirs-from the socialist police
chief in Berlin regarding one of the suburbs of the capital:
This area is crawling with the foulest elements, presenting

not just a criminal but a political danger, since they have
brought with them from Poland and Russia their Bolshevist
ideas which they are spreading here. They are also a menace to
public health. The notion of cleanliness is completely alien to
them. The houses where they live amid incredible crowding are
full of filth and vermin. At the same time they are crammed
with foodstuffs and delicacies of all kinds which they obtain
by smuggling and in turn sell. Finally we note that the housing
crisis the people are suffering, the people who pay taxes, will
be intolerably aggravated by our taking in this host of aliens. It
would be tot.ally useless to show any consideration to people
like that, whose activities are in no wise honorable, who pay no
taxes, who elude all control but on the other hand take every
opportunity to evade our German laws and do harm to our Ger-
man heritage, indeed to destroy it
Such official declarations would mobilize all the Jewish lobbies if

they were uttered today, yet Dr. Schacht himself added this co~ent
to the report: "The immigration of Eastern Jews during those years was
a matter of great concern." And he offered the following analysis: "The
case of the Jews poses a problem that was subsequently to occupy first
Germany, then the entire world: the roots of German anti-Semitism."
This from the same Dr. Schacht who remained the servant and con-
fidant of Jewish moguls in Germany, England and America before, dur-
ing and after Hitler.
Along with the political mess there was a corresponding moral
mess. In addition to politics, the Jews had also taken over the ent.ertain-
ment industry.
"The plays of the 1\venties," Joachim Fest wrote, "dealt with the
themes of patricide, incest, or crime and their provocative offerings
were much applauded. In the final scene of the Brecht and Weill opera
Mahogan.n.y, tJ1e actors filed across the stage carrying placards with
tlle slogans 'to chaos in our cities,' 'free sex,-honor to 1nurderers,' or
'inunortality for scoundrels.'"
The Jewish-controlled press gave such plays and operas rave re-
views, which had tJ1e effect of h1tiluidating the bourgeoisie into tre1n-
bling silence. As for tJ1e Gennan workers, they were powerless to
counteract anything of tllis nature.
Hitler, too, was powerless in tJ1e face of this Jewish invasion. The
chaos, tJ1e Jewish n1assacres of innocent and defenseless Germans, the
trarnpling of all values aJld staJldards, and tl1e literal destruction of Ger-
numy: He saw it all.
Alone in tl1e world, what could he do? His first public reaction re-
vealed hin1 to be just as courageous in civilian life as at the front. When
Jewish conunissars came to his Munich barracks to order the soldiers
in the process of demobilization to join the Conuuunist revolution,
Hitler jun1ped onto a chair aJld shout.eel to all his fellow soldiers: "We're
not revolutionary guards responsible for protecting a rabble of Jewish
idlers."
The Jewish invasion of Gem1any and the Treaty of Versailles would
from tllen on mobilize all of Hitler's energy.
CHAPTER
ATREATY OF USURERS
n July 28, 1919 the Versailles Treaty fell like a bomb on 60

million Germans. It was meant to crush them to the last
1nan. Stresemann compared how in 1871 a victorious Ger-
many had dealt with a defeated France: "Germany, having
won the war and occupying a part of France, was con-
scious of the necessity of mending relations between the two peoples."
French diplomat Saint Vallier officially praised the procedures of the
German commander in chief. When French Ambassador Gontaut-Biron
returned to Berlin, he was welco1ned by the crown prince himself with
the words, "The war is fortunately over and now peace must be main-
tained." French President Thiers also declared that the Gennan high
command "deseived the sincere gratitude of France." The French gov-
em1nent had paid a relatively modest amount of money to Germany, and
the war had been truly over.
The treaty of Versailles on the other hand would not be a treaty of in-
telligent victors, but a "diktat of despots."
Historian Cartier summed it up: "In retrospect it is striking to contem-
plate this monument to ignorance and error. The treaty gave a chaotic
and brutal Poland vast territories inhabited by Germans. It defied geog-
raphy and politics by creating the Danzig corridor. It established a
Czechoslovakia, a Romania, and a Yugoslavia bursting with 1ninorities,
all would-be states flouting Wtlsonian principles. It left it to a commission
to fix the an1ount of Allied claims but proclaiined the principle of total
reparations based on article 231, by which Gennany was to admit total

guilt for starting tl1e war. Article 228 den1anded that Gennany hand over
all •'war criminals,' including tl1e Kaiser and all tl1e generals of the Ger-
man anny."
The treaty was iinposed by Allies who were by now totally disunited.
The British, bloated with German assets after tl1e defeat of Germany,
were now n1ore concen1ed witl1 weakening France than with squeezing
anythmg n1ore out of Germany. And Wilson was embittered at seeing
his pomts ignored. As for the French government, it was only in a veng~
ful treaty tl1at it could justify the sending of millions of young men to
their death. Yet most French historians condemned the treaty, including
emment historians Raymond Brizat and Pierre Soisson, the latter of
whom concluded: "All the seeds of World War II are contained in the
Versailles Treaty."
After the debacle of France in 1870 there had been six months of dis-
c~ons between the French representative Jules Favre and the German
Bismarck before a mutually approved treaty was reached. However, from
Januacy to May of 1919 the Germans were excluded from all discussions.
The Allies were at each other's throats, with the French politicians d~
manding nothing less than the extermination of Germany. Stresemann,
who was ready to make any reasonable concession, could not hide his
anmement at the hypocrisy of the Allies: "This international conference
dealing with Germany's fate without German participation outrages all
the principles for which these gentlemen claim they have gone to war
agaiMt Germany."
Thus Germany, excluded from the talks, had to suffer the loss of
Alsac~Lorraine and all of its public and private assets within these
provinces. Its Saar province, separated from Gennany, would be robbed
of its coal for fifteen years. The Rhineland would be occupied in its en-
tirety. One and a half million Germans would be thrown under the Polish
yoke, and another three million in the Sudetenland would come under
~ rule. German waterways, including the Kiel Canal, were placed
under Allied control.
Yet the principle of self-determination was the very basis of the
armisticeofNov.11, 1918WlderwhichGennanyhadagreedtolaydown ·
her arms. The treaty violated this solemn agreement In East Prussia two
plebiscites were held in districts coveted by Poland. The result was an
overwhelming vote by the inhabitants t.o remain German. The Allies
A TREATY OF USURERS I 59
forced them into Polish rule anyWay. Adding insult to htjury, they not only
lost tl1eir Gennan citizenship but Were still liable to pay reparations de-
1uanded by the Allies. Yet tl1e near unanimity of the two Prussian
plebiscites had alarmed the Allies, who then made sure that the Sudeten
Gennans would be U1rown into the Czech pot without any say in the mat-
ter whatsoever. In Upper Silesia, after 18 months of armed Polish inter-
vention and French pressure, a plebiscite was finally held, with a majority
of 60 percent favoring Gennany; but Upper Silesia was nonetheless deliv-
ered to Poland.
Austria, however, represented the most blatant violation. The great
majority of Austrians wished to be reunited with Gennany. The Austrian
parliainent, backed by national elections in favor of reunification, had
solemnly supported unity with Gennany. But this expression of the pop-
ular will was swept aside by the 'lreaty of Versailles, and the six million
Austrians were refused any kind of plebiscite.
Cartier reported that when tl1e Democratic Republic of Austria pre-
sented the first article of its new constitution, which declared Austria to
be an integral part of the Republic of Gennany, "the Gennan government
voted unanimously for Austria's admission into the Reich." The treaty
makers declared this popular vote null and void: self-detennination ap-
plied only when it suited the victors.
Historian Soissons confirmed that "tl1e Gennans of Austria were pre-
vented from uniting with their brothers in the Reich while at the saine
tin1e three and a half million of them were forced into a co1npletely fab-
ricated Czechoslovakia under the rule of Czechs who were themselves a
minority. Thus, Gennan territories that were never conquered by a for-
eign army were distributed to peoples that were not even involved in the
war, such as the Poles, the Danes, the Czechs and the Slovaks. GennailS
really felt that their country was being put on the rack."
Versailles had beco1ne an auction block for the distribution of more
than ten million unwilling people. A selies of co1nplen1entary treaties, St.
Gennain on Sept. 10, 1919 and Ttianon on June 4, 1920, mutilated Hun-
gary by forcing 1nillions of Hungarians under Ro1nanian rule and more
than nine 1nillion non-Serbs under the nde of tlu-ee nlillion Serbs. Like
slaves, none of these people had ai1y say in tl1eir fate. Not only had a mil-
lion and a half Gennans been delivered into Polish bondage, but also 1nil-
lions of Ukrainians, Rutl1enians, Byelontssians and others. Millions of
Groats, Slovaks, Slovenians, Albanians, Bulgarians and Hungaiians were
thrown int.o the claws of their traditional enemies who persecuted and
killed thenl. It was tl1e policy of tl1e Grand Orient government of France
t.o encircle Genuany witl1 artificial states headed by fellow Grand Orient
nlenlbers in order t.o destroy Bavaria, Austria and Hungacy that had been
resisting tl1e Grand Orient new world order.
The financial dilrtat was just as monstrous. The British, who had al-
ready helped thenlSelves t.o Gennan assets and colonies, encouraged the
French t.o squeeze Gemlany for tlle last pfennig in order to keep them at
each otller's tJu-oats. That tllere was little 1nore t.o squeeze out of Germany
was well known by tlle British establishment Lord Maynard Keynes, its
econonlic policy adviser, accurately calculated that Germany would be
hard put t.o pay even a tenth of what the Allies wanted. Keynes was
quickly silenced on tllat i$ue, and tlle Treaty powers went on demanding
chimerical sums from Germany. As a result, Germany would be further
reduced to ruins.
Added to this monument of inequity was the Allied insistence that the
Germans accept tlle exclusive guilt for WWI. History has since amply
demonstrated that the Pan-Slavs of St Pet.ersburg and the crabby little
la,vyer president of France, M. Raymond Poincare, were the ones prima-
rily responsible for the war.
The treaty also numdated Germany to arrest more than 700 German
generals and hand them over t.o the Allies for punishment
Thus tlle Germans would be condemned to universal infamy and eco-
nomic slavery for decades. Stresemann would later lament: "The Allies
told us nothing but lies. We were insane to listen to them and to lay down
our anns before concluding peace."
The diktat outraged the general population, and the socialist prime
minister, Scheideman, resigned on the grounds that "this treaty is unac-
ceptable." Another socialist, Bauer, took his place but was unable to hold
the anti-treaty coalition together. The centrist Enberger capitulated t.o
the diktat It cost him his life ten months later when a young German pa-
triot shot him dead "in retribution for his treason."
Yet the Weimar government, fearing the people's wrath, would not
sign until the Allies threatened to invade Germany with three million
troops. By then Gennany had disarmed and would have faced certain de-
feat against a fully armed enemy, and after defeat still another dismem-
berment of what was left of Germany.
It was literally with a gun at its head that the German parliament fi-
A TREATY OF USURERS I 61
nally signed, two hours before an Allied invasion. Stresemann, the peace
seeker, had to admit: "A signature obtained by extortion is invalid. This
tyrannical treaty heralds a new war."
Such protestations were greeted with Allied hatred and contempt
Even months after ratification, German officials ordered to appear before
the Allies to learn how they were to carry out the diktat were treated like
galley slaves. Even Dr. Schacht, who prided himself on eajoying fraternal
relations with the Grand Orient tyrants, was not spared. He recounts with
what contempt the Germans were treated:
"I was heading a delegation of industrial experts to the Hague in order
to deal with Allied demands for our potassium and other chemical prod-
ucts. The reception we received reminded me of Persian satraps receiving
suppliants from a vanquished Athens. The most elementary courtesy was
lacking. Our delegates had to stand during the talks because chairs had
not been provided. I did not hide my anger at Allied rudeness, and my
colleagues anxiously begged me not to complain. I did so, however, to
the Allied presiding general: 'We have been put in the worst hotels and
miserably fed. We are not allowed to go out, and we are made to stand
while taking part in the discussions. I ask you to put an end to this state
of things.' 'You seem to forget that your country lost the war,' the general
coldly replied. And I returned to Berlin enlightened by the experience."
The Gennan people choked on such deceit and humiliation. Germany
abounded in intellectuals, businessmen and high officials, but not a single
one would challenge the status quo.
It was then that the unknown and lone Corporal Hitler called on Ger-
many to resist His conquest of the people would be nothing short of a
miracle. It would take him fourteen long years to reach and win over,
one by one, the millions of voters, since the establishment and special in-
terest groups were automatically against him. ·
On the other side of Europe, Lenin was gleefully watching all the
events that would lead to another fratricidal war in Europe. It fitted per-
fectly with his plans for world subversion: "A peace of usurers and exe-
cutioners has been imposed on a Germany ravaged and dismembered."
For Lenin, this was not a tragedy but a great opportunity. This was a Eu-
ropean civil war out of which Communism would emerge the sole victor.
Thus between tl1e all-powerful Conununist International, backed by
high finance, and ex-corporal Hitler, backed by no one except the com-
mon people, the duel had begun.
In the late 191 Os and 1920s, communists in Germany attempted a number of putschs,
Under Eugene Levine, they seized power in Bavaria from 1918-1919, and this revolution
became a model for similar uprising across Germany. In response, Hitler formed the
SA out of former German soldiers, and put down the communist revolution that the Ger-
man Republic couldn't control. Here Hitler Is sourrounded by young SA members.
CHAPTER
SEVEN AND AHAlF MARKS
itler went to the Altes Rosenbad coffeehouse at Herrn-

strasse, Number 45, the meeting place of the Deutsche Ar-
beiter Partei (DAP). He had to cross a dark and silent hall
before reaching a small acijoining room only dimly lighted
by an oil lamp. Six committee members were present. The
minutes of the previous meeting were read. Three letters had been re-
ceived and duly answered. The treasurer then made his report: The party
had seven and a half marks.
Hitler became the seventh member of the committee and the 508th
party member, a so1newhat pious exaggeration since to inflate the party
a bit, the numbers started with 501. And even his name had once again
been misspelled, and would so remain in various party documents, as
Adolphe Hittler.
Hitler was not exactly canied away. As he recalled the meeting: "There
was no plan for action. No leaflets. Not even membership car~. It was
the mania for association in its most exasperating fonn."
Yet it was fro1n that dimly lit back room and that party worth seven
and a half 1narks tl1at tl1e force would ultimately arise to rally and bind to-
gether tl1e 1najority of the Gennan people in just a few years.
But on tllis 16th of September 1919, Hitler realized he would have to
breathe life into the pathetic little party.
He borrowed a typewriter fro1n the barracks and personally typed the
schedule for future n1eetings. There was not enough money to buy
st:arnps, so he delivered tl1e invitations door to door and distributed some

to passersby. His name did not appear, as he did not want to alann his fel-
low members, who were already concerned by his zeal.
Getting people to attend was hard work Eleven came to the first meet-
ing, 13 to the second, 17 to the third, 23 to tl1e fourth, 34 to the fifth. But
Hitler accepted this slow progression as normal. To him, true democracy
was based on convincing people one by one. But he also realized that the
tragic days Germany was going through made it urgent to reach as many
people as he could. To this end he convinced the party to gather together
enough money to buy space in the Volkischer Beobachter, a small patriotic
newspaper. The advertisement called people to attend a meeting at the
Hojbraukeller in Munich on Oct 16, 1919. Hitler was optimistic because
the Keller could accommodate more than 100 people.
Since his days at the front Hitler had known that only propaganda
could seize the masses and carry them along. He did not regard propa-
ganda in any pajorative way but in its original and still contemporary
meaning, which was that of propagating or conveying anything of a spir-
itual nature. While the word was later debased by the Allies as meaning
the spreading of lies, Hitler always regarded it as the spreading of truth.
The highest Cabinet post in Hitler's government was the Ministry of Prop-
aganda, headed by his most trusted lieutenant, Dr. Joseph Goebbels.
Hitler's definition of the word was the same as that of the early Christians
for whom propaganda meant only the spreading of the Gospel.
Thus, Hitler knew tllat the absolute propaganda was the absolute
truth. It had to be repeated ceaselessly, and it could not compromise in
any way witll tlle lies of the enemy. The very notion of compromising
good with evil was totally alien to Hitler: It was only the stock in trade of
craven politicians which he instinctively ~ected He also knew that tllese
politicians were distasteful to tlle masses and that tlley had been waiting
along time for someone they could believe in. They would never compro-
mise with tlle enemy, and neitller would he. For Hitler and the masses
the truth was nonnegotiable, and he would uphold it against all and every-
thing. Because Hitler was a rare combination of idealist and realist at the
same time, he knew that propaganda had to be impressive, colorful, bois-
terous and entertaining as well as instructive.
He would meet his worst enemies on tlleir own ground with his own
patriotic followers waving tlle red flag. He knew red was a beautiful and
energetic color which should not be monopolized by tlle Marxists. He
SEVEN ANO A HALF MARKS I 65
would retake control of the streets from the Jewish-financed Communist

thugs. He would create uniforms for the most patriotic Gennans that
would be honored by the population and flags that would symbolize the
rebirth of Gennany. He would establish his own press so that for the first
time a Gem1an leader could conununicate directly with his own people
and not be dependent upon alien-controlled news media Propaganda
would be the powerful vanguard of a real popular revolution.
If Hitler had already worked out his program, he was still without any
means to itnplement it Unlike Lenin and Trotsky, who received nilllions
from Jewish financiers, Hitler and his tiny party did not have anything.
IInagination and personal work would just have to provide.
When Hitler was confronted with having to pay the rent of a room in
a beer hall, the heating, the cost of leaflets, he realized he had to raise the
funds from the very public that attended the 1neetings. Why shouldn't
tl1ey pay to hear him when the worstjoumalist was getting paid? He felt
confident he could entertain, educate, arouse enthusiasm and inspire an
audience better than an empty-headed actor. If he could not outperfonn
the best of them, he believed he should forfeit the right to speak. Thus
Hitler invented, by necessity and political instinct, tl1e political meeting
with a price of achnission. A ticket was an investment the people made in
the party, and the party would be beholden only to the people.
More than 100 people showed up at tl1e Hojbraukeller on Oct. 16,
1919. The first speaker was Dr. Erich Kuehr. But it was not until Hitler
took tl1e stage that the audience came alive. Hitler won tl1em over. He
personally passed the collection plate: 300 marks. A Munich police report
dated Oct. 17, 1919 stated: "He is a shopkeeper about to become a trav-
eling salesman." So much for the police intelligence division!
Hitler wrote: "I talked for 30 minutes. What I had previously felt as a
possibility now appeared to be a reality. I was a gifted speaker." But it
was 1nore than a gift. No man in history ever had such a genius for words
and gestures and for communicating directly and so deeply witl1 his au-
dience. Half a century later tile world is still waiting for his like. Hitler
was to speech what Wagner was to music. Wagner was fortunate that the
art of music is tl1e first of arts. It transcends all conventions and borders.
But speech is limited to those who can understand it. Hitler was con-
scious of tllis difference, and he would do all in his power to close tile gap.
Three montl1s after Hitler joined the D.AP. many things had changed.
The party moved to a bigger room below the Sternekerbriiu brewery. It
had bought an old Adler typewrit.er, a desk, a few chairs and a cabinet
for filing documents. TI1e room was no longer lit by a gas lmnp but by
electricity. The rent was 50 1uarks per n1ontl1, seven tin1es 1nore tl1an the
amount in the parcy treasury when Hitler joined.
By December 1919 tl\e party's coffers were bulging with 3,600 marks,
which allowed all bills to be paid witl1 700 marks still left over. Since this
was all due to Hitler, tlle parcy na1ned him director of propaganda. Hitler
now had a mandat.e to n1ove forward, and he did not wait He took the 700
marks left in tJ1e party's cash box and rent.ed the largest hall in Munich:
the HojbrauJunis FestJwll, which was 10 times larger than any of the pre-
vious party n1eeting locations. It was a gamble. How could he fill such a
hall? Enraging tlle Conununists, he plast.ered Munich with his crimson
red posters advertising tJ1e meeting and sent trucks decked with red flags
and loudspeakers into tlle Mwtlch streets. On tlle evening of Feb. 24, 1920
more than 2,000 people packed tlle Hojbriiuhaus.
Hitler still declined to put himself forward. The posters he himself had
written did not even mention his name. The featured speaker was a
Johannes Dingfelder.
Dingfelder spoke on and on witllout attracting much reaction even
from tlle socialists and Communists who had come in great numbers.
Hitler followed as the second and unfeatured speaker. Quickly the
Hojbriiuhaus came alive witll clapping from supporters and insults and
flying beer mugs thrown at Hitler by the Communists and socialists.
Fists flew.
Gradually tlle crowd became quiet as Hitler kept talking. Communists
who had come to boo and disrupt were now hanging on Hitler's every
word Hitler was enunciating the famous 25 Points which would remain
the granit.e foundation of National Socialism until April 30, 1945.
In themselves and in the context of the day, the points were not so
extraordinary: Gennan nationality reserved for citizens of Germanic
blood-the idea was 50 years old. The death penalty for profiteers and
usurers-a popular idea in those days of near famine. Promulgation of
a Jewish statute-another popular idea Profit sharing between work-
ers and companies, old-age pensions, a popular army -all of which
were widely supported. Other political parties were putting forth siin-
ilar platfonns. ·
What had captivated the audience was the orator. After each point
the crowd jumped to their feet with a clamor. After two and a half hours
SEVEN ANO A HALF MARKS I 67
The Hofbrauhaus of Munich, built in 1589 as part of the Royal Brewery of Wilhelm V
of Bavaria, was a central organizing and meeting hall for the early National Socialist
German Workers Party. In this photo, snapped in 1929, Hitler meets with NSDAP
leaders to plot political strategy in the wake of the devastating economic collapse.
Hitler was drenched as if he had fallen into a swimming pool. The crowd
was delirious with enthusiasm. Hitler had totally won the1n over.
Eckart, a famous Munich writer, was so overwhelmed that he gave his
own overcoat to Hitler, saying to the crowd. "This man will liberate Ger-
many." Another enthusiastic spectator repeated. "If anybody can one
day shape Germany's destiny, it will be tl1at man Hitler." His name was
Julius Streicher.
Hitler 1nade this curious remark: "A wolf has just been born." From
then on, that word would follow Hitler wherever he went. Every Hitler
headquarters would be marked with a wolf head or some other badge
of the wolf, denoting a "wolf den" was inside.
The establishment press, as was to be expected, dismissed tllis mo-
mentous meeting with a few lines. "A certain Herr Hitler gave a reading
afterwards of tl1e party s program," the left-wing liberal Miinchner Post
wrote, "and Herr Hitler spoke rather like a comedian."
One has to believe tl1at tl1e "comedian" came off rather well, because
in that same year, his audience reached a percentage of 30 percent work-
ers, ahnost all of the1n won over fro1n the socialist electorate.
As for tl1e progrrun of tl1e 25 points, Hitler attached little ilnportance
to it So1ne of the points, such as nationalizing tl1e big depart1nent stores
and agrarian land, would soon receive no ftuther mention. But when
Hitler crune to power, tl1e refonns he made in those areas had the full
support of botl1 1nerchants and fariners. He never allowed any of the
points to divide tlle German people. Although they were never officially
modified, no one made them an issue: People had approved the man
rather tllru1 tl1e points. He had earned public trust and devotion.
Hollywood caricaturing notwitllstanding, Hitler had a cool and real-
istic mind. His own program was perfectly worked out in his head. But
in 1920 it was still too early to spell it out in full. He despised the
pompous and e1npty pro1nises of politicians, and his program would
break the cycle of broken pro1nises. What he had in mind was to har-
ness the talent and energies of all the classes, to co1npletely transform
tl1e life of the German worker, and to triple the industrial output. Farm-
ers would occupy a place of honor in tl1e society. Jews would be ex-
cluded from public office. The territory of the Reich would be liberated,
and the 10 million Germans exiled into alien bondage by the Versailles
Treaty would be returned to the nation.
But Hitler had tlle realism to know that the revelation all at once of
such plans and tl1e considerable risks which tl1ey implied, would be ill-
considered and pre1nature. It was sufficient for now that certain unshak-
able tenets of faith served as his Tables of the Law. Whatever was
essential would spring fortll from his mind and his will at the proper time.
Unlike other politicians on tlle political right, politicians who were at
the moment far more celebrated than hilnself, he knew exactly what he
wanted. And he now knew himself capable of doing what no one else
could do. He was no longer just "a ce1tain Herr Hitler," as he had been
characterized in tl1e press. He had beco1ne Hitler, the living presence,
whom History would have to put up with whether or no.
CHAPTER
EIN FUEHRER
he Hojbrauhaus success would sever the last link holding

Hitler to a military life. The army had given Hitler a bed,
something to eat and a few marks a month. It was the only
life he knew. But on April 2, 1920 he would take his leave and
embark on a brand new life.
His demobilization entitled him to one pair of socks, a pair of under-
pants, a shirt, a pair of trousers, a coat and a pair of heavy shoes. He also
received a bonus of 50 marks, hardly enough to buy food for two weeks.
He rented a small room, four meters by three, on the Thierschstras.5e
in Munich. It had only one window for light, and no heating. The furnish-
ings consisted of a small iron bed, two chairs and a little table complete
with a washbowl. Hitler would live there for years. Captain Truman
Smith, the U.S. ntllitaty attache in Berlin, who came there and interviewed
Hitler in order to infonn his ambassador, had this to say: "The room was
poor and depressing beyond imagination. It looked like a back room in a
New York slum." This report led the State Department to dismiss Hitler
as a penniless and therefore inconsequential tramp.
Fran~ois-Poncet, the French ambassador, was much more perceptive:
"It would be a mistake to tllink that this visionary was not realistic. He
was very coldly realistic and very calculating. To serve his iron will he
possessed fonnidable mental powers, an extraordinary perseverance, ab-
solute fearlessne.ss, the power to make sudden and ruthless decisions, a
most penetrating glance, and an intuition that warned him of perils. He
was in touch with his people as if by antennas."

After each meeting where he was cheered by tl1e crowd, Hitler would
return alone and silent to his freezing room at 41 Tilierschstrasse. Mate-
rial comfort was never and would never be a consideration for Hitler.
During the next few months following his statement of the 25 Points,
Hitler organized and spoke at 46 meetings, all told addressing 62,371 peo-
ple who paid to hear him. TI1at was more than the combined attendance
of all the left-wing parties.
As was to be expected, one of his speeches (on Aug. 13, 1920) was
devoted to the Jewish problem. The posters read: "Why are we against
tJ1e Jews?" Hitler was adroit, and he did not answer the question with
the violence of a Lutl1er, who called the Israelites "a pestilence, a
calamity, an epidemic, a curse for Christendom." "His speech," histo-
rian John Toland relates, "was a marvel of propaganda Hitler demon-
strated that he was a genius in blending past and present events into a
form calculated to inspire hatred and resentment. He was constantly
interrupted by laughter and cries of approval. Eighteen times the audi-
ence burst into applause and the reaction was especially loud when he
referred to the Jews as nomads."
This speech was one of the rare ones to have been preserved in its en-
tirety. Cartier, the historian, who possessed a copy of the complete text
in shorthand, commented: "Hitler's theme was work and the Jews. His
approach to the question was harsh in the extreme, but it is true that the
text, when read, is that of a lecturer, not a rabble-rouser. Hitler had obvi-
ously prepared his speech very carefully and probably learned it by heart,
which with his peerless memory was mere child's play. The reaction of
the audience showed that Hitler's presence and oratory gave the text life,
holding the audience's attention and kindling their passion. For the first
20 minutes the audience was rather subdued, but thereafter the de1non-
strations became more and more frequent and enthusiastic. Hitler had
gotten their attention. He brought the house down with laughter 11 times,
dispensing sarcasm and irony with the art of a consummate actor. He
commanded thunderous applause and finished his speech to a prolonged
standing ovation."
In his peroration, Hitler had addressed not just his German audience
but all other peoples as well: "People of the world, unite and resist the
Jews. People of Europe, free yourselves from the Jewish yoke."
It was the call for a crusade: a crusade, however, that was strictly lim-
EIN FUEHRER I 71
ited to the Enifemung ("re1noval") of the Jews that Hitler had already
spoken of in his report to the Reichswehr in 1919. Hitler's solution was to
re1nove the Jews from the levers of power in Germany and thus keep
the1n fro1n do1ninating the destiny of the Germans. This was not a new
concept. For 1nore than a tl1ousand years Europeans had sought to keep
the Jews fro1n dominating their various countries. Hitler would never tol-
erate tl1e control of Germany by non-German aliens, and if the Jews did
not like a Gem1any for the Gennans they silnply could leave. This was the
gist and sum total of Hitler's famous speech of Aug. 13, 1920 on how to
deal witl1 the Jewish problem, notl1ing further than that.
However, thanks to post WWil propaganda, the word Enifemung was
deliberately mistranslated in the myriad anti-German books as meaning
"liquidation" or"annihilation." British books were the first to produce this
fabricated meaning which was then translated into French and all other
languages. IronicallY, these propaganda books were then translated into
Gennan, so that Germans would have to read a total mistranslation of a
Gennan word as gospel. Since draconian "anti-Nazi" laws imposed by the
Allies after WWII make it a crime to quote "Nazi" writings, it has not been
possible to rectify publicly the mistranslation.
Thus the "final solution" so often quoted from Hitler's 1920 speech has
been one more hoax perpetrated on the public by political "historians."
Unlike Hitler, who wished only for the Jews to go away, the average Ger-
man in 1920 felt much less kindly.
Hitler's moderation was in marked contrast to the popular wrath of
the time, and it is an irony of histocy tl1at it was this moderation that was
used in attempts to discredit Hitler in the eyes of the Gennan people as
being himself a Jew.
This thesis was taken up in hundreds of books by Jewish and non-
Jewish writers. On Oct. 14, 1933 the British Daily Mirror, owned by Jew-
ish press magnate Lord Beaverbrook, published the photograph of a
Jewish tombstone of one A.vraham Eyliyohn, a Bucharest Jew whom the
Mirror claimed to be Hitler's grandfather. This claim received wide ac-
ceptance throughout the English-speaking world and had to wait for his-
torian Werner Maser to expose it as an absurdity: Eyliyohn's birth
certificate preceded by five years the birth certificate of Hitler's father!
Then, a "confession" was wrenched from the tortured Nure1nberg
prisoner Hans Frank that a Jew had made Hitlers grandmother pregnant.
An American officer by the nmne of Sixtus O'Connor was the recipient of
tllis muazing confession, which named the Jew in question as a certain

Frankeireitller from Graz in Austria
This 3.$ertlon was supposedly corroborated by an article written by
s01ne distant relative of Hitler's and published in the Aug. 5, 1939 edition
ofParis Soir. Again Maser point.ed out that neither the name Frankeire-
ither nor the name Frankenberger, as it had also been quoted, appeared
in any records of Graz. Furthermore, not a single Jew had lived in Graz
from tlle time of the fifteenth century until ten years after the death of
Hitler's grandmother. When Maser then checked the Paris Soir article, he
was surprised to find that the name Frankereither or Frankenberger was
never mentioned. Thus another piece of Nuremberg "evidence" was
based on torture and fabrication.
Another fantasy swallowed by the Allies was Hitler's alleged destruc-
tion of Dollersheim, an Austrian village that was his father's birthplace.
This charge came from a defrocked priest called Jetzinger, who claimed
that in 1937 Hitler had ordered the village destroyed because there were
compromising records tllere pertaining to his origins.
"Dollersheim and the neighboring villages no longer exist," Jetzinger
wrote. "The whole region once fertile and thriving is nothing but desola-
tion now. Death lies in wait for you everywhere in the shape of unex-
ploded bombs. The former villagers have been dispersed throughout the
country. For some years Hitler had savored his triumph in having blown
up and bulldozed flat his fatller's birtllplace and his grandmother's grave
... Everything indicates that Dollersheim's death sentence cmne from
Hitler himself and was inspired by his implacable hatred of his father
whose own father may have been Jewish.''
It made good Freudian copy, but again it was a fabrication. Historian
Maser set tile record straight "Jetzinger's statements are patently absurd.
After the Anschlus.s, a commemorative stone was placed near the tomb
of Maria Anna Schicklgruber, engraved with a cross and the words: 'Here
lies the Fuehrer's grandmother, Maria A Hitler, born Schicklgruber.'
Schoolchildren and members of the Hitler Youth would often come there
to pay tlleir respect, and the grave was always very well maintained."
Just before WWII the Wehrmacht set up a training field in the region.
Afew isolated farmhouses were slightly damaged, but none of the church
and government records was ever destroyed, nor was the village of
Dollersheim. The destruction of the entire Dollersheim region occurred
between 1945 and 1955 and was brought about by the Soviet occupation
EIN FUEHRER I 73
forces, a fact known but unpublicized by Establishment historians. All

the fabrications about Hitler from self-hating Jew and Jew-hating gentile
to enraged and hysterical loudrnouth were false.
Werner Maser was amazed at the meticulous care with which Hitler
prepared everything he did. All his writings were based on a wide range
of accurate notes: "The 250 pages of notes which Hitler wrote by hand in
preparation of his speeches at tl1e beginning of his career reveal that he
had a prodigious memory, with a wealth of material at his disposal, and
tl1at he was fully cognizant of his conclusion when he drafted the first
line of his statement A few names, brief sentences or images on a piece
of paper were all he required to develop his argument Whenever his eyes
fell on one of these words, an automatic process was triggered and he
would speak, always knowing what names, figures, facts, details, images,
ideas, examples, or figures of speech to rely on."
It was not, however,just the genius of his oratory that assured his vic-
tory, but his education, his profound and meticulous preparation, and the
incisive clarity of his world view.
No one else in Germany had such an all-encompassing mind and
matchless ability to express it
The Weimar Assembly was not lacking in good people. Every par-
liament on earth abounds in rhetoricians, some pretentious, some am-
bitious, some greedy and corrupt, but some also honest agents of the
people, and some even of keen intelligence. And weak or brilliant, they
are not necessarily bad. It is the parliamentary system which is a failure:
a democracy of 500 men, none of whom can truly make use of his gifts
or exercise any authority. The system is geared to level all to a common
denominator of mediocrity for the benefit of often hidden manipulators
and bosses. It is a faceless system in which no one is ever held respon-
sible, and the people's interest is always betrayed. Should anyone with
the slightest individuality and character emerge, he will as a matter of
course be sabotaged by the backstabbers and trampled by the herd.
Stresemann was such a man. In 1923 he was defeated five times. Noth-
ing serious can be accomplished that way, above all when a country is
in a state of decline.
Hitler was hated not for his failings but for his qualities. No country
can survive the betrayal of its people by the mediocre and the manipula-
tive. Real democracy relies on the trust people place in a true leader not
to betray their interest. And only such a leader with the unswerving sup-
port of tl1e people is truly able to rally tl1e 1nost co1npetent to serve the
people. Co1npetence is anathenla to tl1e de111ocracy of the 1nediocre.
The Wehnar republic was such a den1ocracy, and for Gennany it
1neant suicide.
h1 March of 1921 the Weitnar ,politicians fled from Berlin to Stuttgart
following a coup fmanced by Trebitch Lincoh1, an alien Jew, with tl1e con1-
plicity of Baron von Luttwitz and Gen. von Seeckt, head of the Reich-
swehr. A half.Jew, Wolfgang Kapp, was tl1e nominal leader of the putsch,
but Trebitch Lincoln was tile real chief of operations. The only man in
tl1e goverrunent not to be intilnidated was Cabinet Minister Noske.
On March 12, 1921 Noske confronted von Seeckt and tl1e officer corps
with tilese words: "All tl1e officers who are ready to follow me, raise your
hands." Only two complied. Von Seeckt said: "TI1e Reichswehr does not
shoot at the Reichswehr."
Hitler had gone to Berlin to assess tl1e situation for hilnself. He noted
how a parliament of sheep had been tl1rown into chaos by a couple of
Jewish manipulators. Yet discredited as it was for signing the Versailles
Diktat, the goverrunent still had ilie bureaucracy at its disposal, which
enabled it to suppress nationalist opposition; but at the srune tune it
was too craven to build up a strong Gennany. All the government's po-
lice, agencies and repressive laws were aimed at the suppression of
populism and nationalism. Sixty million Gennans were thus held at bay
by ilieir own, but alien-n1n, government, while Hitler's supporters num-
bered only 3,000.
It would take Hitler 12 years of struggle, always against the stream,
against continual obstacles, to reach ilie remaining 60 million Gennans.
But he never had the slightest doubt tilat he would reach his goal.
GennanY-s condition was becoming 1nore and more catastrophic. Her
province of Upper Silesia had been handed over to Poland and along witl1
it a major part of her steel and coal. In the Rhineland the Grand Orient
French government was openly fomenting subversion and sedition. Eco-
nolnically, tile Gennan mark was spiraling downwards. Gennan cries for
help were answered only witil renewed demands by tl1e Allies, best illus-
trated by tile peremptory words of tile Jewish finance Ininister of France,
M. Klotz: "The Germans will pay."
The Allies demanded that Gennany give tilem 2 million tons of coal
every monili. Failure to comply would result in the invasion of Ger-
many. Then tilere was ilie incredible demand for payinent to the Allies
EIN FUEHRER I 75
of 226 billion gold 1narks over a period of 42 years, with interest, an as-
tronontlcal amount impossible to pay. Then there was a 12 percent tax
directly payable to the Allies on all German exports, another impossi-
bility since Gennany had already been bled white. The German govern-
ment gave everything it could, but the Allies protested that the
payinents were short.
Poincare, then head of the French government, manifested his dis-
pleasure by sending Allied troops into Gennany every time German pay-
ments were late or insufficient: into Frankfurt and Dannstadt in 1920;
into Dusseldorf in 1921; and finally, in January of 1923, he invaded the
Ruhr province with French and Belgian troops.
All tl1is was a boon for the Communists. The Allied exactions were
maldng things easy for them. What with the Allied looting and the Gennan
govern111ent corning apart, Communist subversion had again become as
much a problem as in 1918.
Hitler was well aware that between the red revolution backed to the
hilt by Moscow and his own few thousand faithful supporters, the odds,
in the nonnal course of events, were most unequal. He bluntly told his fol-
lowers: "Whoever fights on our side will win no laurels, much less mate-
rial rewards. He will most likely end up in prison."
Many, in fact, would fare worse. Hitler's long stn1ggle would cost the
lives of 1,785 of his faithful followers and see 43,000 of them wounded at
the hands of the Conununists.
But it was Hitler's courage and the sacrifice of tl1e people who joined
him that hnpressed the common folk of Gennany. Hitler never lost an op-
portunity to renlind tile crowd: "These lalights, tllese counts, these gen-
erals will never do anything. But I will, and I alone!" It was not said
vaingloriously but simply as a statement of fact which he would increas-
ingly de1nonstrate.
The bourgeois parties had decided to protest the Allied demand for
269 billion gold marks, but when they heard that tl1e Communists would
disrupt tl1eir protest, they ran for cover. This cowardice so outraged Hitler
that he decided to organize the protest all by himself. It was Feb. 2, 1921.
Hitler decided to rent tl1e huge hall of tl1e Krone Circus in Munich for a
meeting. To advertise tl1e 1neeting, he had thousands of posters printed,
more blood-red than ever,just to enrage the Marxists, and he flooded the
workers' districts with flyers. Again he sent out his zealous supporters in
tnlcks, brandishing flags-flags for the first time displaying the swastika
H1·t1er had desimied tl1e flags hiinself, revived from Germany's ancient
past He had worked on tl1e d~si_gn for several
b·
· ru•g11t.s, refining 1·t.s dimen-
sions and proportions to the millimeter. He had strengthened the cross by
turning its curved extremities into sharp right angles to emphasize its
synlbolizing of life and energy and inserted it within the black, white and
red colors of the old flag of the German empire. 'l\venty years later the
Hakenkreuz would fly from Narvik to Stalingrad.
On Feb. 2, 1921 it was still an unlmown flag. Yet from the very first it
alarmed the authorities, and it was decreed by the Bavarian minister of
the interior that in future the police would be justified in using force t.o
prevent the display of the emblem in public. 'l\velve years later the self-
same minister would hasten to fly from his balcony the very flag he had
outlawed.
The hall of the Krone Circus was filled to capacity on the nigllt of the
meeting. More than 7,000 persons showed up, all paying their admit-
tance fees to swell the party's coffers. Hitler himself was astounded. He
spoke for two and a half hours. "From the first half hour I was mter-
rupted by constant applause. At the end of two hours the applause gave
way to an almost religious silence. When I uttered the last words, a
wave of enthusiasm engulfed the audience, and they sang with fervor
Deutschland itber alles."
So-called political experts, who to this day have never been able t.o
understand the chemistry between a people and its leader, were then as
now grasping to explain what was to them inexplicable. The Jewish his-
torian Haffner attributed Hitler's success to hypnosis: "It was a hypnotic
faculty such as enables a concentrated force of willpower to take pos-
session of a collective unconscious at any time and in any circumstances.
This hypnotic effect on the masses was Hitler's paramount political
asset.,,
Haffner did not credit Hitler with any other talent or the German peo-
ple with a mind or will of their own. Events would later force Haffner t.o
revise his evaluation: "One thing nevertheless besides the power of his or-
atory might have struck the observers and critics of Hitler even before
1933 if they had looked a little closer: his talent as an organizer, or more
accurately his faculty for getting hold of men who are efficient instru-
ments of power and gaining mastery over them."
After the succ~ of the Krone Circus meeting Hitler would hold an av-
erage of four meetin~ a month. In excess of 60,000 marks were raised
EIN FUEHRER I 77
after expenses had been paid. In addition, party members paid fifty pfen-
nigs per month, or six 1narks per year. Multiplied by thousands, that rep-
resented an important contribution to the new 1novement
Hitler's successes, however, soon gave rise to jealousy. The party's
original founders felt overtaken by events and were critical of what tl1ey
called "Hitler's follies." The saturation propaganda used on Munich left
them aghast: such a waste of 1noney! Somehow they had forgotten that
when Hitler joined tlle party there had been only seven and a half marks
in tl1e treasury. They felt humiliated by his success and somehow wanted
to bring hiin down to their own level of mediocrity. In order to lessen his
influence they wanted to merge the party with other little parties that
were vegetating just as they had been before Hitler's arrival. But for Hitler,
the 1nerging of weak and mediocre parties would never add up to any
real force, and he always opposed such ideas. He knew he had the gift of
inspiring the masses and helping them to become a real force, and he had
no tune to spend with lackluster politicians. He believed that once people
had chosen a leader, tl1ey had a right to expect him to be responsible for
everything witl1out any buck-passing, and he had the right to expect un-
conditional support fro1n tl1e people. He believed that throughout his life.
Thus, the petty men of the original DAP planned to bring Hitler down
to size: anotl1er episode in the eternal war between the 1nediocre and the
talented. Hitler had gone to Berlin for six weeks on a talking tour and for
high level n1eetiI1gs with Gen. Ludendorff, Grand Ad1n. Schroeder, Ernst
von Borsig, a steel industr:y president, and the Count von Reventlow. The
count's wife, French-born Countess d'Alle1nont, was full of admiration
for Hitler and told all the guests of her elegant salon: "This man is the fu-
ture 1nessial1 of Gennany."
While Hitler was gatl1ering influential support for the party, he lean1ed
of tl1e petty sche1ning going on in Munich. He quickly returned to face
the pruty bureaucrats. Instead of receiving explanations he found himself
being questioned in a hostile 1nanner. How little tl1ey knew Hitler! Heim-
1necliately resigned fro1n the party.
The charges against Hitler were as absurd as tlley were false. Be-
sides being denounced for being power mad, he was accused of being
a won1anizer, and, what's 1nore, with women who wore costly silk pants
and s1noked cigarettes. Poor Hitler! All tlle while living like a monk in
his freeziI1g room.
Meanwhile, tlle rank and file 1nembers were refusing to accept Hitler's
resignation, and he was invited t.o speak on July 11, 1921. Strong in the
lmowledge that without him the party was nothing anyway, he gave the
parcy an ultimatum: if they want.ed him t.o stay, all the whining schemers
would have t.o resign; all the nay-sayexs, obstructionists, and envious
mediocrities would have t.o go; and the party would have t.o recognize
him at once as president with full executive powers. The petty schernexs
were shocked and suddenly realized they had taken on a very unusual
opponent Drexler, one of the main schemers, threw himself at Hitler's
feet: "In recognition ofyour vast lmowledge and your selfless work for the
betterment of the party, as well as your exceptional eloquence, the com-
mittee is ready t.o grant you full executive powexs and t.o name you pres-
ident as soon as you rejoin the party."
But Hitler did not accept, and without asking the committee that had
already eaten its humble pie, he made a direct appeal on July 29, 1921 t.o
the party rank and file. Hitler want.ed power from the people, not from a
handful of petty schemexs. His arrival at the meeting was met with thun-
derous applause. Hitler's conditions were put t.o a vot.e: 553 for and one
against
Lat.er, at a huge rally at the Krone Circus, all the conditions were offi-
cially ratified. Hitler had become mast.er of his house by a virtually unan-
imous vot.e and by the will of the people. It was on that night that for the
first time he became the Fuehrer. The magic word had been launched.
CHAPTER
HITlER'S THREE CHANCES
o many plans were going through my head. I thought
'' for days of what I could do, but everything came down
to the fact that I did not have a name and therefore did
not have the power to perform any useful action." This
had been Hitler's frame of mind up to the day the Ver-
sailles treaty was signed. He had less than one hundred marks in his
pocket, knew hardly anyone in Munich, could not rely on support from
anyone, and it would take another two years before his name would even
be spelled correctly.
Est.ablishment media and historians have always st.ated that Hitler did
not have a program. More importantly he had principles. Programs must
be adapted to the trend of the day, but principles retain their direction
and integrity. Programs which are not based on principles are like clay
without a sculptor.
During the lonely years in Vienna and for 51 months at the front, Hitler
had been part of the rhythm of a whole people and had felt its spiritual
strength, like a minuscule star in an immense constellation. The higher
principles spiritually guiding him represented for Hitler the only reality.
In Berlin he told me that great men are imbued with a spirituality which
allows them to raise humanity from mediocrity and bondage.
Bereft of any material means, Hitler had only his faith and his princi-
ples. But even unknown to himself, Hitler had the gift of the word. It was
a gift of God. The greatest minds may st.ammer at the mere reading of a
page or nvo in public. Gennany especially had always lacked orators.

Even the Weilnar politicians were stiff and uninspired in their public
speeches. It was then that Hitler recalled tl1e spark in the expressions of
his fello,v soldiers when he spoke to tl1em in tl1e trenches. Why did tl1ey
hang on his every word and listen to him, a nobody, while tl1ey dismissed
wiU1 conte1npt tl1e 1noutlling of tl1e high and nlighty?
At the begiluling of 1919 what was left of tl1e Geiman anny was the
country's last rampart against Communist insurrection. With great diffi-
culty de1nobilized men and officers managed to save Berlin and several
other Gem1an cities. But the price was lligh when the Corrununists cap-
tured then1: they were tortured abominably before being murdered. The
patriots were also attacked by certain fonner Russian-held war prisoners
who had been brainwashed by Marxist co1nmissars before being sent
back to Gem1any.
The patriotic soldiers organized to win back these brainwashed Ger-
nlanS. They started a cmnpaign to restore national and civic principles to
all who had seived in the anned forces. But to imple1nent the campaign
tl1ey needed to train trusted patriots fro1n the non-commissioned ranks
in a special course at tl1e Munich University. Among the1n was Hitler,
whose patriotism and antiConununism had been noted. But he was still
an obscure ex-soldier. ·
A few days into the program, Professor Karl Alexander von Mueller,
who was teaclling a course on the political histo1y of the war, addressed
the officer who had sent him the little group of enlisted students, Captain
Karl Mayr, and asked him, "Did you know you had an orator of talent
an1ong your trainees?"
"Who is he?"
"A certain Hitler from tl1e List Regiment," replied von Mueller. The
professor had discovered Hitler's talent completely by chance: "After my
lecture, whlch had created a lively discussion, and when I was about to
leave the room, I bun1ped into a small group of men blocking the exit
who appeared fascinated by the words of a man with a strangely guttural
voice ... I was struck by his pale face, tl1e unmilitary lock of black hair
across his forehead, his small brush of a mustache, and his large light
blue eyes shining witl1 a fonnidable intensity. As I obseived his listeners,
I had the in1pression that their exaltation which he had inspired was com-
ing back to him like a boomerang1 giving greater strength to his impas-
sioned voice.n
HITLER'S THREE CHANCES I 81
Well, Captain Mayr was not an ordinary officer; he was one of the
prime movers of the propaganda and instruction section of the military
co1runand. And he acted immediately on von Mueller's evaluation. He as-
signed Hitler to a Munich regiment as "confidential agent of the Regional
Military Co1U1nand."
It was not Hitler's ideas that earned this unexpected promotion but, as
Mayr put it, "the very beautiful, clear and incisive form he gave his
words." Mayr saw in Hitler a brave and patriotic soldier capable of win-
ning back tl1e soldiers who had been brainwashed by their Communist
captors. So he was sent to tl1e l..€chfeld camp, which had a lot of them.
Within a n1onth he had turned tl1e camp around politically. Lt. Bendt,
Hitler's colTilnanding officer, sent his report to Munich:
"He makes his ideas accessible to all with great clarity and simplicity.
He is a born popular orator who, by his passionate zeal and because he
acts like one of their own, captures people's attention and wins them over
to his way of thinking."
Thus Hitler the orator was discovered as the result of luck. His suc-
cess at Lechfeld finally gave him a name and some well deserved recog-
nition. He was no longer an anonymous corporal among 400,000 others.
Now he would receive a letter written by his superior Captain Mayr on
Sept. 10, 1919 beginning with the particularly ceremonial expression,
"Sehr verehrter Herr Hitler." For one who had known the rigor of subor-
dination in tl1e German anny, such a change was hardly believable.
One aspect of Hitler's success at l..€chfeld in particular caught the at-
tention of his superiors: tl1e correlation he established between the Com-
munist revolution in Germany and the constant presence of Jews at the
head of the subversion. The chief of army intelligence and education
asked Hitler to write a report on tl1e influence of the Jews and Judaism.
Hitler's report was quite revolutionary. He acknowledged that most
people were physically repulsed by Jewish characteristics, but saw this
repulsion as instinctive, while his own was strictly intellectual. On the
basis of logical analysis he concluded that for the last 2,000 years the
Jews had maintained an intangible race which set them apart from any
national community in which they happened to find themselves. Thus
Hitler's first political document was a 1nilltary report:
Hit is true that the danger Judaism poses for tl1e German peo-
ple is expressed in the repugnance which Jews trigger in a large
8:2 I HITLER DEMOCRAT
part of our people, this repugnance is generally not based on

knowledge of the pernicious influence of Judaism on our nation,
but on en1otions. This is a grave error. Defense against Judaism
must not and cannot be based on emotional reactions but on
kno,vledge of tl1e facts. In tl1e first place, Judaism is a race, not a
religious community. Jews never designate themselves as Ger-
mans, Poles, or Americans of the Jewish faith, but always as Ger-
man Jews, Polish, or American Jews. Language is the only tiling
Jews borrow from foreign nations. Jews do not have to belong
to the Judaic faith to be Jewish. Throughout the centuries Jews
have kept their own racial characteristics within a most restric-
tive consanguineous circle with greater strength than many of
the peoples among whom they live. Thus an alien non-Gennan
race lives among us. It has neither the inclination nor the power
to renounce its racial traits or its way of feeling, thinldng and act-
ing, and yet this alien race has the same rights as ourselves.
Hitler concluded that emotional reactions led to pogroms, whereas a

rational reaction would lead to the systematic and legal abolition of the
special privileges eltjoyed by the Jews. Other resident aliens did not have
such benefits, and Jews could not be a privileged alien race within tl1e
German nation. But the ultimate objective was to distance the Jews from
the German people. The word "distance" is noteworthy. Until his deatl1
Hitler would talk of "distancing" the Jews from the Gem1an population.
The word "extermination' would never appear in any of his writings.
Hitler's report was well received in Munich military circles, but it went
no further than that.
The tragedy of WWII has been monopolized by pro-Zionist lobbies as
a purely Jewish tragedy. This is a historical fraud perpetrated for financial
profit That some Jews suffered during such a massive conflagration
brought about by their own leadership is certainly true. However, tile ex-
aggeration of these sufferings is so out of proportion that it is detriment.al
to the ver:y interests it is supposed to serve. Professional historians are
now bringing accounts of the greatest militacy conflict the world has ever
suffered back within the realm of facts.
When Hitler was elected in 1933, the Jewish leadership literally de-
clared war on Germany, and it was a racial war that Hitler was forced to
wage. But his weapons were political and social, and this created the
HITLER'S THREE CIIANCES I 83
1~1~!"- 1!1ad¥:.h~~r·,c~J$ ,. ., l:~!Jit;

JUDEA DECLARES WAR ON GERMANY .
,llr. Cllurcllill's Willlering
Attack .011 Premier
Offkcr ' llROl'CIIT l'S ~I ~ Gtorrt
J}\.'<:(rilx'il :-.u~~ l.anl\bllrJ
The Girl TO WAR' l)n.d
" 11,,.,,._ ,c;.
DAYI or t.o."t •m""'~...,
'VORLD• UN
I.
,JTE -- ··---=
"~;..•-:",.': :"" iTHE
SOVIET Ii-I H J.U."
. .., ,_ - - ·
on ..,, O<~• Cl'R
80 ,..COTT or v,.ER •'' I n,,
',. - ·::: :!!. AllB.\..~\DOII 'S'""'" ....... .... "t:
£l',1ERT\l!-/S .... . - ..--.. T•' >< ,
I
GOODS t::-:~=.:::
- - ••--• • 1
:=.._.,._
::~ ...,,-_~:.::r:-
, -- \
::;-
_ _
___I
• - ' • , -:..,~ : : :
_.,. - - - -
=---:.:-.:..-= ~"f \ U...J,UU\l.Ut - -
NI .\lt,,A\U't'l
-
....,. •tl ~
_ • ..,.
+
~IA."5 Or...,10:>,STlt,\TIO~ • .... -
_ .,.. - • • •
_tAn•'"',.. - - • .. - ...· ;:::.-
=::::-..::.:.~ .......- · ._...., ==--=-~-=----=
• - • ..
. ,...,. _. ..•..,.._.'"'•••~•~..,..,
. .........._ ..,:_._...,(........-..,
Cinon
\lllUCrft• ! ~ -:. 7.:.=:~ t";;·.::::.:.:..!!
...
·-:•-·--- ...... - . ..... - ... . • ._...
=.:--:...::.::-.
__ ..,. - -
A"•••~•• ,... ,,., ,•t-•tt•"' u •••• Sh I • 1 .. _,_ _ .._
=-:::_ .::· t .." ,., .. • : : - : . : : - : : ":.:
~•••11"' ... O ,,
... . "... .,,.._f...."'- .. ~ •--. - p T" --- •:---.- .::_,...: ...!
._ ._. .... ~ ..._..._..~- ........•::_ --.:,.-
... ~~ :-:,.;.
- - ~-:':
--·
.• - -·-- · · • •- • · ·-......., ra)"tr ; =;;•• ..:,.;::. ..... .... _ ~- ............ ....... - ...~--"'- __,__......,
,,,,,....;;.;.
"- ;::;;.•~
: "· ·,- -:.:-::_..:;;;.
- -- <:::::,,~~
.. .,,.\ -~·:...-'!:-::-
.... ,,__._._ · - --- ..............
- -:..:.· -:-.:::......
. . .-:!:•"'"-" :.__-.:-
~.;.-... 'OP ~
~,...._
.-
This famous news headline announcing the Jewish economic boycott of Germany
was published by the Daily Express in 1933. Daily Express was a Communist-leaning
newspaper that employed Leon Trotsky as a columnist and correspondent after the
Soviet Revolution In Russia-along with other leaders of European Bolshevism.
greatest political and social revolution the world has ever lmown. It was
to suppress this revolution tJmt the Allies were once more 1nanipulated
into an anned conflict against Gennany.
It was not really surprising tJmt in 1919 Hitler's superiors in the militruy
were interested in the Jewish proble1n, since Jews were directing the
Co1nmunist revolution against Gennany. And that was another reason
for the majority of Gem1ans to be anti.Jewish. Hitler transferred these
emotional feelings to an intellectual level. Patriotic nillitacy men were the
last reserves of a defeated Gennany and in that capacity were interested
in saving Gem1any fro1n further chaos. They were thus on the lookout
for patriotic parties as well as subversive ones.
In Munich, Anny Intelligence was interested in a small pruty, the
Deutsche Arbeiter Partei (DAP). TI1e founder was a railway locksmith
called Anton Drexler. His basic idea was Umt tl1e salvation of Gennany lay
in the reconciliation of socialis1n witl1 nationalism. It was an original con-
cept since tl1e two had always been n1ortal enemies.
Since his Vienna days Hitler had lmown that tl1ese so-called enentles
were in fact complementacy. Drexler, the locksnlith, was intensely patri-
otic as well as an ardent advocate of the social justice that in those days
,vas called socialism. This patriotic "socialism' was indeed the mortal
enenzy of tl1e perverted socialis1n run by Jewish financiers and their
Marxist nurrderers. Thus the father of National Socialism was an honest
and patriotic working man who, with his workshop comrades, fonned
their small party on Jan. 6, 1919. It was a true worker's party, not a tool
of inten,ational finance or of Jewish intellectuals.
From time to time the D.AP. met in a room on the first floor of the
Altes Rosenbad beer hall and invited Munich citizens to attend. A few
people came out of curiosity.
Captain Mayr decided to send an observer to the next D.AP. meeting.
After his discovery by Professor von Mueller and his exploit in the Lech-
feld camp, this was Hitler's third stroke of luck. This time the meeting
,vas being held in the back room of the Stemecker beer hall, and the guest
speaker was to be Gottfried Feder, an economist. The meeting was at-
tended by 45 people, among who were two shopkeepers, 16 tradesmen,
an artist, a professor, and a judge's daughter. Hitler wrote in his notebook
after listening to the guest speaker: "Ridiculous hairsplitting pettiness.
rve heard enough!" As he was leaving, the professor, whose name was
Baumann, asked to rebut the speaker's boring speech.
He stood up and launched a tirade in favor of Bavarian separatism.
That was too much for Hitler and although he was there only as an ob-
server, he jumped on the podium and vehemently refuted the professor's
argument His eloquence and the power of his arguments stunned the en-
tire assembly with admiration. Hitler himself was stunned with what had
just happened This time he was not addressing soldiers but 45 civilians
who, unlike in the anny, were not bound by a common discipline
On that evening he felt the strength of his word. He could capture peo-
ple's attention, and he could convince them. He felt not only the strength
of his argument but that of a great energy exchange between orator and
audience. He witnessed how the power of his oratory gave power to those
who listened, and how in tum they returned more to him.
Thus on this Dec. 17, 1919 Hitler had conquered by his word alone.
Hitler had discovered himself, and 45 people had undergone a transcen-
dent spiritual experience.
On that night, when Hitler returned to his barracks, he was troubled
by the revelation of his eloquence and could not sleep. Upon his return
he had pulled out of his pocket the small brochure Anton Drexler had
HITLER'S THREE CHANCES I 85
given him, and at dawn, while tltrowing crumbs of bread to the mice he
was in the habit of feeding each day, he undertook to read it. Basically it
expounded the essential idea that was the point of departure of his own
doctrine: the bringing together of the classes. But the style and presen-
tation were poor, and the text had little impact.
The next day Hitler had set aside the meeting and had no thought
whatever that it would lead to anything further. His audience, on the
other hand, was still spellbound and wanted him back.
They wanted him to become a member and invited him to a commit-
tee meeting. A mechanic had told Drexler: "That man really can speak.
We certainly could use him."
For Hitler, the matter was not that simple. First, he was not a man
"who could be used." His instinct had always told him that he was predes-
tined to lead. Then the party had appeared to him to be of ridiculously
slight importance; and apart from the idea of the reconciliation of the
classes, its program was petit bourgeois in spirit. There was talk of a
"table full of good food" being one of the keys to happiness, and for Hitler
that was not very edifying.
Hitler told me that Drexler had however conceived a capital idea for
the salvation of Germany which was in agreement with the fundamental
principle of his own vision of the reconciliation of the nation with social-
ism. Combining patriotism with social justice was an idea that for Hitler
would be the driving force behind all his future political activity.
For two days Hitler hesitat.ed. Finally he reasoned that even though his
audience would be small in number, he himself was all alone. Forty-five
people were almost nothing, but it was 45 times more than him. The DAP
was minuscule, but it was there, and it had a name, and it was better to
start from there tl1an from zero.
"I concluded that I had to take the step. It was the definitive resolution
of my life. There could not be any going back," Hitler recalled in regard
to this fateful decision.
_l
A young woman bums worthless German marks in a furnace during the era of the
Weimar Republic. Some people used marks as wallpaper for their homes; other pho-
tos show German children using bundles of Weimar-era money as toys instead of
wooden blocks. Millions of Germans were homeless and destitute, but in a few short
years after taking power, Adolf Hitler had reversed the entire situation.
CHAPTER
THE llQUIDATION OF THE PARTIES
he deputies of the Weimar Republic had themselves voted to

relinquish their power, and Hitler, in his brown shirt, com-
pletely poised and standing there before them in their own
parliamentary chamber, had not spared them. "Well, gentle-
men, it is up to you to decide whether it is to be peace or
war." But how could they take up the fight again now when they had re-
ally quit fighting years ago.
Hitler had not been willing even to let the last recalcitrant deputies, the
Socialists-reduced at tl1e time of the vote to a mere 17.55 percent of the
nation's representatives-assume the martyred pose of a persecuted
fringe group.
"You speak of persecution!" he thundered. "I think that few indeed are
those in our party who have not suffered imprisonment and organized
persecution at your hands. You seem to have totally forgotten the years
when you used to rip off our shirts because the color didn't suit you. It is
your persecutions that have made us what we are!"
"In those days," he said scathingly, "you constantly banned our news-
papers and prohibited our 1neetings. For years you did that, and now you
say that criticism is salutary! You're a bit late."
The shoe was now on the otl1er foot.
"We National Socialists 1nean from here on to clear the way for the
Gennan worldnginan. We shall be his spokesmen. As for you gentlemen,
you are no longer needed. And do not confuse us with the bourgeois
88 1 HITLER DEMOCRAT
world. Do you think tJ,atyour star nu\V shine again? Well, gentle1nen, Ger-
n,any's star will shine, and yours is going out In the life of a people, tl,at
which is rotten, old and weak disappears and does not rettu11." (Fest,
op.cit.., vol. 1, pp.35-37.)
Hitler treated these bankrupt socialists as having no further interest
to hint "I can tell you only one tltlng: I do not want your votes! Gem1any
nu1St become free, but not by your doing."
In the space of only half a year, Hitler would liquidate all tl1ese now for-
feit political parties. Notjust the Socialist Party, already rejected by the
people tl1emselves, but all tl1e maneuvering politicians of all the otl1er
parties as well: the Conservatives a century behind the times, the myopic
Nationalists, the Christian braggarts-fomenters and agents all of tl1em
in Gennany's nlSh to ruin from 1919 to 1933.
All of tJ1ese parties without exception had long since lost their drive.
If some of their members were still voting for them at the beginning of
1933, even under Hitler, it was just due to habit The impetus was gone.
The parties had botched everything, let everything go to ruin. Germany's
collapse, her six million unemployed, the famine, the demoralization of
an entire people, that was their doing. Now that a strong man who was
supported by the nation had taken their place, what could they do? As
Joachim Fest would write, they were "like a spiderweb with which one
hoped to catch eagles."
Hitler was ready to spare their feelings to some extent, but it was also
certain that he wouldn't mind it too much if he had to step on the toes of
recalcitrant politicians.
He said to the distinguished deputies of the Reichstag: "You consider
me a man without education, a barbarian. And yes, we are barbarians!
We mean to be. It's an honorary title. We are the ones who will rejuvenate
the world" (Fest, op.cit., Vol. I, pp. 36-37)
Hitler's millions offollowers had rediscovered the original strength of
rough primitive men of a time when human beings still had some back-
bone. It was a Dionysian power they would be able to reserve entirely
for the tasks of the future. They would not even have to use it to liquidate
the political parties. A mere shrug of the shoulder, and they would fall
apart.
ki was fitting, the first to crumble into dust was the Socialist Party, the
"Social Democrats."
Their end was totally lacking in panache.
THE LIQUIDATION OF THE PARTIES I 89
On March 23, 1933 their party had still shown a bit of guts by refusing
to vote Hitler plenary powers. After 1945 the pruty would glory in that
deed, while at the srune time taking care not to add that less than two
n1onths later, on May 17, 1933, when Hitler called for a new vote by the
Reichstag to approve or disapprove of his foreign policy, tl1e socialists
did not vote "no" or abstain from voting; tl1ey voted "yes." It was as if they
felt thernselves sub1nerged by the wave of Hitler's popularity and by tl1e
n1assive support for Hitler within their own ranks; and they voted "yes,"
just like the deputies of the National Socialist Party.
Goering, fro1n the height of his presidential perch, 1neasured the turn-
coats with his glance and sneered: wi'he world has witnessed that the Ger-
man people are in agree1nent when it is a matter of their destiny."
In 1933 that destiny was Hitler.
After that, the socialist rank and file could hardly think of opposing
Hitler when their leaders, who for so long had abused him and railed
against him, were now behind him and voting for hiln in the Reichstag.
That day was the beginning of the end for the Reds. Following the ex-
ample of their own party leaders, at the first political shift, the socialist
electorate, too, would vote for Hitler.
Over the years the German Social De1nocrats had left labor in the
lurch. Now they had just turned their red coats, had gone over to Hitler.
For the people, that was the end, the public avowal of abdication.
It was child's play for Hitler to liquidate tl1e party, for after its deliber-
ate capitulation it was no longer of any interest to its ex-members. On
June 22, 1933, 30 days after the vote of the Reichstag, it was officially dis-
solved.
"No one," Fest wrote, "expected any show of resistance on the part of
the SPD."
It could have changed its initials to RIP: resquiescat in pace.
The peace would be total. Apart fro1n a few leftist 1ne1nbers of the par-
liament who went into exile and led stifled and useless lives abroad, the
German socialist ex-deputies continued every month to pocket the pen-
sions that Hitler had allowed them without batting an eyelid. They con-
tinued to promenade the streets of Berlin. Some of them, with great
success, threw in their lot with the Nazis.
Nostke, the most valiant fighter the socialist party had after 1918, the
lumberjack who became a minister, honestly acknowledged in 1944,
when the Third Reich was already rapidly breaking down, that the great
n,~jority of the Gem,an people still re1nained true to Hitler because of

the social renewal he had brought to the working class.
Aft'er the "Reds," the "\Vhites." had their tun1.
A nun,ber of 1nicroscopic parties-of tJ1e two dozen some parties ex-
tant in 193'2-went ahead and liquidated themselves witl1out anyone even
n1arking the decease. TI1ey had been created only to allow one or another
n1an of ainbition to sliU1er his way into tJ1e privileged ranks of the
deputies. But without any deputy seats in sight, what purpose would it
have served to go on recruiting voters? So tJ1ey had disappeared like the
birds of the forest that go to die no one knows where.
The parties of the right, fonnerly in1portant but whose voters had left
then, behind, were conscious of the futility of expending effort or money
to keep political organi7.ations artificially alive when their supporters had
deserted them; and so one after another they, too, had voluntarily dis-
banded.
The "Gennan National Populist Party," abandoned by its bourgeois
supporters, was the first to give up the ghost Afew days later, on June 28,
1933, the '"State Party" did the same. Then, on July 4, the "Bavarian Pop-
ular Party."
Among all the mossbacked conservatives, the most difficult to get rid
of ·was Hugenberg, who w~ still a minister and whom the Nazis rather
disrespectfully called "the old porker in the beet patch." He ultimately
lost his beets while trying to play the supenealous Hitlerite at the London
Conference, making a claim W\IeaSonably soon for the restitution to Ger-
many of all her colonies and calling for the absorption of the Ukraine in
a newly constituted Reich! In Hitler,s view, that w~ totally inopportune
in those first months when he w~ making a tremendous effort to curry
favor abroad and calm~ down. After that diplomatic blunder Hugen-
berg had no choice but to resign. So much for the man who, on Jan. 30,
1933, had sworn he would muzzle Hitler.
In getting rid of him, Hitler scored a double succ~: By disavowing
the international troublemaker, he reassured those outside the Reich
whom Hugenberg's demands had alanned; and he freed himself of the
"old porker" whose gaffe had cost him whatever standing he had in Mar-
shall von Hindenburg's estimation. The "old porker" would still be heard
to grunt from time to time, but it would have no effect
The last political remnant to be got rid of had been the clerico-bour-
geois ..Centrum." Following its vote in favor of plenary powers for Hitler
THE LIQUIDATION OF THE PARTIES I 91
on March 23, 1933, the Centrum had lost all credibility as an opposition
party. Its following dwindled away with indifference. Monsignor Kaas hav-
ing sided with the Fuehrer in the Reichstag, why should not the rank and
file do likewise?
And then, diplomatic negotiations with the Vatican aiming at a concor-
dat were close to a favorable conclusion. In that effort, more than in any
other instance of his captatio benevolentiae, Hitler had been guile and
patience personified. He needed to assure himself of political peace with
the Church at least until, with the high clergy fully involved, the adhesion
of the Catholics of Germany would be general.
By voting for Hitler in the Reichstag, Msgr. Kaas and his pious clerics,
without even suspecting it, had been led to the edge of the trap and fallen
into it straight.away. On July 4, 1933, rosaries in hand, they declared them-
selves politically neutral. As a party they were thus effectively dead.
An observer of these events at the time noted: "All the things abolished
here were things that no longer interested many people."
With regard to the demise of the two dozen or so political parties,
Joachim Fest wrote: "If anything demonstrates the degree to which the
Weimar Republic had lost its vitality, it is surely the passivity with which
the institutions that forced its development allowed themselves to be
mastered." (Hiller, the Fuehrer, p.41.)
To bmy the political parties and annihilate their network of voters,
once so extensive, had taken only a scant half year, with nobody hurt.
And everyone now standing stiffly at attention before the corporal they
had been jeering at only a year before.
The person most astonished at the rapidity with which the political
parties had successively gone under was Hitler himself. He couldn't get
over it
"So pitiful a collapse one would never have believed possible," he re-
marked when he had thrown the last shovelful of dirt on the graves of
the deceased.
Bek>ved by the people, one of the focuses of the National Socialist platform was Ger-
man youth and increasing the number of children born to German families. Because
of his pro-famity perspective and his economic policies designed to ease the financial
burden children place upon working parents, Hitler was adored not only by young
people but also their parents. CRE0ffiMAG OISTOCK&P EOPLEJNEW SCOM
CHAPTER
WHO WOULD END THE BANKRUPTCY?
e have the power. Now our gigantic work be-
'' gins.,, Those were Hitler's words on the night of

Jan. 30, 1933, as cheering crowds surged past be-
neath the windows of the Chancellery for five
solid hours. His political struggle had lasted 14
years. He himself was 43, that is to say physically and intellectually at the
peak of his powers. One by one he had won over millions of Germans
and formed them into Germany's most powerful political party, a party
surrounded by a human rainpart of hundreds of thousands of storm
troopers, tlu·ee-fourths of them 1nembers of tl1e working cl3$.
He had been extremely clever. He had all but toyed with his adver-
saries and got round tl1em all, one after another.
Standing tl1ere at the window, his rum raised to the delirious throng,
he must have lmown a feeling of triumph. But he seemed almost torpid,
co1npletely absorbed, as if lost in another world.
It was a world far removed from the delirium in the street, a world
consisting of 65 million citizens who loved him or hated him, but all of
whom from that night on had become his responsibility. And as he
lmew-as almost all Gern1ans lmew at the end of January 1933-it was
a crushing, almost desperate responsibility.
More than half a century later, people no longer have any idea of the
situation Gennany was in at that time. Everyone believes that Germans
have always been portly and pltunp.
Well, the Germans Hitler inherited were skeletons.

A score of "democratic" governments had come and gone, often in
utter confusion. Instead of alleviating the people's misery, they increased
it, due to their own instability and because it was impossible for them to
pursue any given plan for more than a year or two. Germany had airived
at a dead end, with all her politicians beating their heads against a brick
wall. In some few years there had been 224,000 suicides-a horrifying
figure bespeaking a state of misery even more horrifying.
By the beginning of 1933 the misery of the German people was virtu-
ally universal. Six million or more unemployed workers roamed abou~
hungcy, receiving on]y a pitiful unemployment benefit of less than 42
marks per month. Many of those out of work of course had families to
feed, so that altogether some 20 million Germans, a third of the country's
population, were reduced to trying to survive on about four-tenths of a
mark per person per day.
The unemployment benefit, moreover, was limited to a period of six
months. After that came disaster: the meager misery allowance dispensed
by the welfare offices.
Notwithstanding the gross inadequacy of this assistance, by trying to
save the six million unemployed from total destruction even for six
months, both the state and local branches of the German government
saw themselves brought to ruin. In 1932 alone such aid had swallowed up
four billion marks, 57 percent of the total tax revenues of the federal gov-
ernment and the regional states. A good many German municipalities had
gone bankrupt
Those lucky enough to still have some kind of a job were not much
better off. Workers and employees had taken a cut of 25 percent in their
wages and salaries. Twenty-one percent of them were earning between
100 and 250 marks per month; 69.2 percent of them, in January of 1933,
were being paid less than 1,200 marks annually. It was estimated that the
number of Gennans able to live without money worries did not exceed
more than about 100,000.
Over the course of the last three years before Hitler, total earnings
had fallen by more than half, from 23 billion marks to 11 billion.
The average per capita income of German citizens had dropped from
1,187 marks in 1929 to 627 marks, a scarcely tolerable level, in 1932. When
Hitler came t.o power, 90 percent of the German people were destitute.
No one escaped the strangling effects of the unemployment The in-
WHO WOULD l~ND THE BANKHUfYl'CY? I 95
tellectuals were hit as hard as Ute working class. Of the 135,000 university
graduates, 60 percent were without jobs. Only a tiny 1ninority were re-
ceiving unemployment benefits.
"The others," wrote one foreign observer, Marcel Laloire (in his
book New Germany), "are dependent on their parents or else sleeping
in flophouses. In the daytilne they can be seen on the boulevards of
Berlin wearing signs on their backs to the effect that they will accept
any kind of work."
But tt,ere was no longer any kind of work.
The same drastic fall-off had occurred in Germany's cottage indus-
tries, comprising some four million workers. Their activity had de-
clined 65 percent; their total sales had plunged fro1n 22 billion marks
to 10 billion. Constn1ction workers were the hardest hit of all: 90 percent
of tl,em were unemployed.
The farmers, too had been ruined, crushed by lo~s amounting to 12
billion marks. Many of them had been forced to 1nortgage their homes
and tl,eir land. In 1932 just the interest on the loans they had incurred
due to the crash was equivalent to 20 percent of the value of the agricul-
tural production of the entire country. And when they were desperate at
no longer being able to pay the interest, tl,eir fanns were auctioned off
from under tl,em in legal proceedings: In the years 1931-1932, 17,157
fanns witll a combined total area of 462,485 hectares were liquidated in
this way.
The Weimar "democracy" had done absolutely nothing about such fla-
grant wrongs as this impoverishment of 1nillions of far1n workers, even
tllough tlley were Germany's most stable citizens and the hardest work-
ing. Plundered, dispossessed, abandoned: Small wonder they heeded
Hitler's call.
Their situation on Jan. 30, 1933 was tragic. Like all the rest of Ger-
many's working cl~, they had been betrayed by tl,eir Marxist leaders, re-
duced to tlle alternatives of miserable wages, paltry and uncertain benefit
payments or tlle outright humiliation of begging.
Gennany's industries, fonnerly fan1ous throughout the world, were
no longer in a prosperous condition, despite the millions of marks in gra-
tuities tllat tlle financial magnates felt obliged to pour into the coffers of
the parties in power before each election in order to engage tl1eir co1nplic-
ity. And for 14 years the well-blinkered conseivatives and Christian De-
mocrats of the political center had been feeding at the trough just as
greedily as tlteir adveIBaries of tlte left.

Nothing is gi\ien for nothing. In politics, 1uoney is delivered in the fonn
of ntanacles.
Despite the willing cooperation of tJ1e politicians of tlte old patties of
all persuasions thus assured the1n, the bigwigs of Gennan capitalis111 had
e>.-perienced only a succession of catastrophes. The patchwork govem-
ntents tltey backed, fonned in tlte political scramble by clailn and com-
promise, ,vere totally ineffective. TI1ey plunged fro1n one failure to
another, never having fuue to ntake provision for anything or the will to
confine tlleinselvcs son1ehow to their proper function.
It was inevitable tJ1at any econonlic plans put togetJ1er amid this po-
litical nlilling about should fail. Tune is required for tl1e accomplishment
ofanything in1portant. It is only witll time tl1at great plans may be brought
to n1aturity and tlte competent men 1nay be found who are capable of
carrying thent out
Nor did the bribing of tJ1e political parties make tllem any less inca-
pable of coping witJ1 the exactions ordered by the Treaty of Versailles.
France, in 19'23, had effectively seized Germany by the throat with her
invasion of the Ruhr Basin and in six montlls had brought the Weimar
govenunent to pitiable capitulation. But then, disunited, hating each
other, how could these political birds of passage have offered resistance?
In just a few months of 1923 seven German governments came and went
in swift succession. They had no choice but t.o submit t.o the humiliation
of Allied control, as well as the separatist intrigues fomented by Poin-
care's paid destroyers.
The substantial levies imposed percentage-wise on the sale of German
goods abroad had sharply curtailed any chance Germany had to export.
Under obligation t.o pay gigantic sums t.o tlleir conquerors, the Germans
had paid out billions upon billions; and when bled dcy, they were forced
to seek recourse in enormous loans from abroad, from the United States
in particular.
This indebtedn~ had completed their destruction and, in 1929, pre-
cipitated Germany into a most terrifying financial crisis.
The big industrialists, for all their fat bribecy payments to politicians,
now found themselves powerl~: their factories empty, their workers,
now living as virtual vagrants, haggard of face, in the dismal working-
class districts nearby.
- Thousands of German factories were silent, like a forest of dead trees.
WHO WOULD ENO THE BANKRUPTCY? I 97
Many had gone under. The ones surviving were operating on a limited
basis. Gennany's gross industrial production had gone down by half: from
seven billion marks in 1920 to three and a half billion in 1932.
The automobile industry provides a perfect example. Germany's prer
duction in 1932 was proportionately only one-twelfth that of the United
States, and only one-third that of France: 682,376 cars in Germany (one
for each 100 inhabitants) as against 1,855,174 cars in France, even though
the latter's population was 20 million less than Germany's.
Gennany had experienced a similar collapse in exports. Her trade sur-
plus had fallen fro1n 2.872 billion marks in 1931 to only 667 million in
1932, i.e., nearly a 75 percent drop.
Overwhehned by the cessation of payments and the number of cur-
rent accounts in the red, even the great Bank of Germany was in the
process of disintegrating. Hamed by demands for repayment of the for-
eign loans, on the day of Hitler's accession to power, the Reich-shank had
in all only 83 million marks in foreign currency, 64 million of which had
already been committed for disbursement on the following day.
The astronomical foreign debt, an amount exceeding that of the coun-
try's total exports for three years, was like a lead weight on the back of
every Gennan. And there was no possibility of turning to Germany's der
mestic financial resources for a solution: Banking activities had come vir-
tually to a standstill. That left only taxes.
Unfortunately, taxes, too, were in a sharp decline. From 9 billion
marks in 1930, total taxes had fallen to 7.8 billion in 1931; then to 6.65 bil-
lion in 1932, with unemployment alone absorbing 4 billion of that amount
Local debts amounting to billions had also accumulated at a fearful
pace. Beset as they were by millions of persons in need, the municipalities
all by themselves owed 6.542 billion in 1928, an amount which had in-
creased to 11.295 billion by 1932; and of the total, 1.668 billion were in
short-term loans.
Any hope of paying off these deficits with new taxes was no longer
even imaginable. Taxes had already been increased 45 percent from 1925
to 1931. During the years 1931-1932, under Chancellor Bruening, a Ger-
many of unemployed workers and industrialists with half-dead factories
had been hit with 23 "emergency'' decrees. This multiple overtaxing,
moreover, had proven to be co1npletely useless, as the "International
Bank of Payments" had clearly foreseen and stated in a pronouncement
to the effect that the tax burden in Gennany was already so enormous
98 I 11111.t-:U OEMOCRAT
d1at it could not be furtl1er increased.

And so in one p.,n of the financial scales: 19 billion in foreign debt
pltL~ the ~ne ainount in do1ncstic debt-in tlte other: U,e Reichsbank's
83 1nillion 1narks in foreign currency. It was as if tl,e average Gennan,
owing his banker a debt of 6,000 1uarks, had less tl,an 14 1narks in his
pocket. to offset. it,
OnC' in<'lnctable consequence of this ever-increasing 1nisery and uncer-
tainty about the future had been the abn1pt decline in the birtluate.
\\1hen your household n1oney is down to four pennies, or notl1ing at
all; a11d ,vhen you fear even greater calruuities in ti,e days ahead, you do
not. risk adding to the nun1ber of your dependents.
In those da..vs births "'ere tlte baro1neter of a country's prosperity. A
<'1illd is a joy unless you have notl1ing but a cn1St of bread to put in its
litde hand.
That Wa.5 the ,vay it was with hundreds of tl1ousru1ds of Gennan fain-
illes m . 1n•>:,
.:10....
The birthrate had been 33.4 per 1,000 at the tilne of Wtlhelln II. In 1921
it \\'a.5 ofllv 25.9 per 1,000. In 19'24 it ,vas down to 15.l per 1.000; by tl1e end
of 100-2, to 14.7 per tJ1ousand.
It reached that figure, moreover, thanks only to the higher rate of
births in the count.Iy areas. In the fifty largest cities of the Reich> tl1ere
\\
1
ere more deaths than birtJlS: in 45 percent of working-class frunilies
there were no birtJlS at all in the latter years. The fall in the birthrate was
nlOst pronounced of all in Berlin, which had less tl1an one child per fantily
and only 9.1 births per 1,000 residents. DeatltS exceeded by 60 percent the
number of ne,v birtllS.
In contrast to the birthrate, the politicians were flourishing as never
before-about the only thing in Germany that was in those disastrous
tiines. From 1919 to 193"2> Genuany had seen no less than 23 govenunents
con1e and go, tlnts averaging a new government every seven n1onths,
more or les& As any sensible person must realize, such a constant up-
heaval and change in the political gangs in power could only render tl1at
power nugatory.
How could anyone imagine that any effective work could be done in
your average factory if every eight months the board of directors> the
management, the business methods and key personnel were all replaced?
Of course failure would be certain.
Well, the Reich wasn't a factory of 100 or 200 workers, but of 651nillion
WHO \VOULD END TI-IE BANKRUPTCY? I 99
participants crushed by U1e exactions of the Treaty of Versailles, by indus-

trial stagnation, by frightful une1nployment, and by the gut-wrenching
nlisery shared by the whole population.
The hundreds of Cabinet ministers who followed each other in swift
succession for 13 years, due to petty parliamentary squabbles, partisan
demands, and personal ambitions, were unable to achieve anything other
than the certain collapse of their chaotic regime of rival parties.
Gennany's situation was still further aggravated by the unrestrained
co1npetition of the 20 regional states, which split up governmental au-
thority into units often in direct opposition to Berlin, thereby sabotaging
incessantly even what little power the central government was limited to
at the time.
The regional remnants of several centuries of particularism were all
fiercely jealous of their privileges. The Treaty of Westphalia in 1648 had
divided Gennany into more than thirty Lilliputian states, most of them
musical comedy kingdoms where each of the petty kings had played at
Louis XIV in courts complete witl1 frills and reverential bows.
Even at U1e beginning of the First World War (1914-1918), the German
Reich consisted offour distinct States, each with its sovereign, its army,
its flag, its titles of nobility, and it's Grand Cross in colored enamel.
The Bavarian clung fiercely to his lederhosen, his pots of beer and his
pipe. He went to war to preseive tl1em. The Saxon would gladly have had
a go-around with the haughty Prussian. Each was intent on his rights.
And faraway Berlin was a thorn in the side for all of them.
Each of these regional states was set up with its own separate govern-
ment and with a president of the council. Altogether they presented a
lineup of 59 ministers who, added to tl1e 11 nlinisters of the Reich and
the 42 senators of the free cities (who were just another kind of council
president), gave the Gennans a collection of 112 ministers, who viewed
each otl1er with a jaundiced eye at best
As for the deputies of the Reich, of tl1ese 22 states, and of the 42 free
cities, they nu1nbered in the thousands: between two and three thousand,
elected by dozens of rival parties.
At the titne of the last elections to the Reichstag, barely two months
before the accession of Hitler to tl1e chancellorship, there had been no
less than 37 different political parties competing, with a total of 7,000 can-
didates (14 of tl1e1n by proxy), all with their hands out and frantically
seeking a piece of the parliamentary pie.
It was downright strange: Tite 1uore discredited the party syste1n be-
came, the greater the ntmlber of dentocratic chrunpions tltere were to be
seen gesturing andjostling in tlteir eagen,ess to get on tlle gravy train.
Those elected, to all appearances, were there forever, with fat salaries
(a deputy of the Reich got 10 tintes what the average worker earned), and
awarding thenlSeh'eS solid supplen,entary inco1ne in the fonn of kind fa-
,10rs provided by interested clients, such as tlle sun1ptuous fur coats that
some of the socialist deputies of Berlin had arranged to have offered their
·whies by certain financiers.
In a democracy, parliamentary mandates are often very brief and min-
isterial appointments even more so. The te111ptation is strong to get it
"iille you can.
Honest, dishonest, or piratical, tllese 112 Cabinet ministers and thou-
sands of deputies had converted Gennany into a country tllat was un-
governable. By January of 1933 tl\ey had been completely discredited
'That was incontestable. \Vhoever might succeed them was left nothing
but a country in ruins.
Half a century later, in an era when so many are living in abundance,
it is hard to believe that tl\e Gennany ofJanuary 1933 had come to such
a point of decline. But for anyone who studies tile archives and tlle rele-
vant documents of that time, no doubt is possible. That's the way it was.
Not a single figure in this balance sheet of failure is invented. In January
of 1933 Gennany was down and bleeding to death.
All the fonner chancellors, such as Bruening and Papen and Schle-
icher, who had undertaken to set Gennany back on her feet, had failed.
To take back in hand a country fallen into such a state of total disarray as
Germany in January 1933, a man would need to be a genius or-as the
people said-to be slightly cracked
Then President Franklin Roosevelt of tile United States, at this same
time, was charged with resolving the American crisis, he had at his dis-
pa;al immense reserves of gold. Hitler, standing silently at the chancellery
window on that night ofJan. 30, 1933, knew that he, on tl\e contrary, could
not count on anything but an empty treasury. No one was going to be
making him any presents. The aged Hindenburg had given him a reckon-
ing sheet full of appalling figures of indebtedness.
But Hitler had wanted it that way. He felt he had the strength of will
to create Gennany anew politically, socially, financially, and economically.
He would be starting from zero; indeed, from less tllan zero. But he knew
WHO WOULD END THE BANKRUPTCY? I 101
how to quickly convert that nothing into a Germany more powerful than
ever before known.
Did he have backing?
Millions of Germans were still his adversaries, disconcerted adver-
saries, to be sure, whom their political parties had betrayed, but who had
not thus far been won over to National Socialism. On the evening ofJan.
1933, Hitler nonetheless had a following in the whole of Germany ofsome
13 million voters, many of them former socialists and Communists.
The two sides-those for and those against Hitler-were very nearly
equal in numbers, but the ones on the left were at odds with each other,
whereas Hitler's disciples were strongly united. And in one thing above
all, the National Socialists had an incomparable advantage: in their con-
victions and their total faith in a leader. Their strongly structured party
had contended with the worst kind of obstacles, and it had overcon1e
them. On that night ofJan. 30, they all knew and were moved by the thrill
of victory.
Hitler had now officially come to power.
Aug 29, 1933-Bertin, Germany: Adolf Hitler, who had been named Reichs Chancellor
seven months before, is here seated with German President Hindenburg (not shown
in picture), about a year before Hindenberg•s death. The two ruled jointly from January
30, 1933 through August 1, 1934, though Hitler's National Socialist German Worker's
Party controlled parliament and directed German policy during this period. NewscoM
CHAPTER
THE UNIFICATION OF THE STATE
t will be the pride of my life if I can say at the end of my
'' days that I won back the Gennan worker and restored him
to his rightful place in the Reich."Those were Hitler's words
when he first became chancellor, and they meant that he in-
tended not merely to put men back to work, but to see to it
that the worker acquired not just rights but prestige as well within the
national community.
The national community had long been rather the proverbial wicked
stepmother in its relationship with the Gennan workingman. The class
struggle had not been the exclusive initiative of the Marxists. It had also
been a fact of life with a privileged class, the capitalists, who sought to
dominate the working class. So the Gennan worker, feeling himself
treated like a pariah, had withdrawn from a fatherland that often consid-
ered him merely an instrument of production.
In the eyes of the capitalists, money was the sole active element that
assured the flourishing of a country's economy. To Hitler's way of think-
ing, that conception was radically wrong: It was capital, on the contrary,
that was an instrument Labor was the essential element: man's endeavor,
man's honor, the blood, muscles and soul of the society.
Hitler did not wish merely to put an end to the class struggle, but to
reestablish the priority of the human being in justice and respect as the
principal factor in production.
One could dispense with gold, and Hitler would do so. Adozen other
104 HITLER llEMOCRAT
d1ings could be substituted for gold as a 1neans of stinntlaUng industtial

acti\'icy, and Hitler would itwent them. But as for work, it was tl1e indis-
1)(.'nsable stntcture.
For the worker to return \\itl1 tn1st. in the fatl1erland, he had to feel
that. henceforth he"~ to be given consideration and treated with equity,
tmtead of n.m1aining a social subordinate, a status he had held for too
long a tune under the govemn1ents of the so-called de1nocratic parties of
both the left.and the right; for none of then1 had ever tn1derstood tl1at in
the hierarcl\v of values of a people, ,vork is the very essence of life; and
nwter, be it steel or gold, only a tool.
The objecti\'e then ,vent far beyond 1nere)y sending six ntillion une1n-
ployed back to work. It was a nmtter of acltievi.ng the victory of a total
revolution: in the conception of tl1e classes, of tl1eir balanced collabora-
tion.
"111e people," Hitler declared, "were not put here on eartl1 for the sake
of the econon\Y, and tl1e economy doesn't exist for tl1e sake of capital.
On tl1e contrary, capital is n1eant to seive the econo1ny, and the economy
in tum to serve the people."
It.would not seive n1ere)y to reopen the tllousands of closed factories
and fill then1 with workers anew, for if the old concepts were still adhered
to, tbe " ~orkers ,vottld once again be notltlng more than living machines,
fareles5 and interchangeable.
\Vhat."~ required ,vas to reestablish that moral equilibriwn between
the workers, hwnan bein~ who shape raw materials, and a useful and
controlled capitalisnt returned to its proper function as a tool. TI1at would
mean changing an entire world, and it would t.ake tilne.
As Hitler knew full well, a revolution of tllat ldnd could not be
achieved \\ilile the central and regional governments continued in a state
of anarchy, merely spinning their wheels, almost never accomplishing
anything and often running wild. Nor could tllere be a revolution in tl1e
society while hordes of parties and tllousands of deputies of every con-
ceivable stripe were meddling witll the operation of a political system
that in any case had been thrashing about incoherently since 1919.
Reestablishment of the effectiveness of Gennany's institutions on a
nationwide basis was therefore an indispensable prerequisite to any so-
cial renascenre. "'A fish goes rotten at the head,,, says a Russian proverb.
It was at the head that political Gennany prior to Hitler was going bad.
The dozens of succesgve governments of tile Reich, all shaky and all con-
TI 1E UNIFICATION OF TME STATE I 105
mcUng, had finally abdicated without even defending themselves. The

aged Marshal von Hindenburg in 1931 and 1932 had arbitrarily replaced
them with senti-dict.atorships, which were themselves doubtful of being
able to do anything.
TI1e last chancellors, Herr Bn1ening, Herr von Papen, and Gen. Schle-
icher, had been able to 1naintain themselves only by issuing executive or-
ders. Their authority, artificially imposed by misuse of Article 84 of the
Gennan constitution, was at the mercy of any unexpected perfidy. This
was runply de1nonstrated in 1932, when Herr von Papen had to swallow
a particularly htuniliating vote of opposition in the Reichstag by a 94 per-
cent 111ajo1ity of the deputies.
The accession to power of Hitler had put an end to such political ex-
cesses. However, Hindenburg had demanded that the new chancellor be
surrounded like a prisoner in ltis own government The Fuehrer had been
obliged to name four tunes as many conservative ministers-basically
reactionaries-as ltis own men to ltis first government: a sum total of only
two National Socialists to start out with.
Hindenburg's representatives had been given the ~ion of keeping
Hitler on a leash. And at the very first meeting of the Reichstag in March
of 1933, Hitler had broken the leash, not by in1posing an executive order
in tl1e fashion of the erstwhile von Papens, but by obtaining an absolute
parliainentacy 1najority giving hiin plenary powers for a period of four
years.
Four years in power for planning, creating, making decisions. Politi-
cally, it was a revolution: Hitler's first revolution. And completely demo-
cratic, as had been every stage of ltis rise. His initial triumph had come
tluough the support of the electorate; and now, in the saine manner, the
real and long-term governmental power granted him by the Reichstag
had been by a vote of more than three-quarters of the nation's deputies
elected in a syste1n of universal suffrage.
That was a clear principle with Hitler: no power witl1out the freely
given approval of tl1e people. He used to say: "If you can win mastery
over the people only by imposing the power of the state, you'd better fig-
ure on a nine o'clock curfew."
Nowhere in 20th-century Europe had the authority of a head of state
ever been based on such overwhehning and freely given national con-
sent. Prior to Hitler, from 1919 to 1932, the virtuously self-styled demo-
cratic governments had come to power only by meager majorities of
perhaps 51 or 52 percent
And tl1at witl1out regard to abstentions in tl1e voting.
"I am not a dict.ator," Hitler had often affirmed, "and I never shall be.
Democracy will be rigorously enforced by National Socialism."
Autl1ority does not mean tyranny. A tyrant is someone who puts him-
self in power without the will of the people or against the will of the peo-
ple. A democrat is placed in power by the people. But democracy is not
limited to a single fonnula It may be partisan or parliamentary. Or it may
also be authoritarian. The important thing is that the people have wished
it., chosen it., established it in its given form.
That was the case with Hitler. His establishment in power had been es-
sentially democratic. Whether we like it or not, the fact is undeniable:
Year after year the German people came out ever more strongly in favor
of Hitler. The more intelligent of those who initially contemned him were
unable t.o deny it-men such as the declared anti-Nazi historian and pro-
fessor Joachim Fest., whom we here find it useful to cite in three succes-
sive statements:
"It was never Hitler's wish merely to put together a regime based on
force. It would be a grave misconception of the nature of the man and of
his motivation to see nothing but his thirst for power."
"He was not born t.o become a mere tyrant. He was obsessed witl1 the
idea of his mission."
"Never more than at that moment had he felt so dependent on tlle
masses nor watched for their reaction with more anxiety." (Joaquirn Fest.,
Hitler the Fuhrer, pp. 44f.)
Those are not lines written by Doctor Goebbels, but by a pitiless an-
alyst of Hitler's activities.
By Feb. 28, 1933, less than a montll after his installment as chancellor,
and under close watch, Hitler had already managed to free himself of the
conseivative tutelage with which Hindenburg had thought to chain him
down. The Reichstag fire had allowed him to obtain an order from tl1e
old marshal "For the Protection of the People and the State," which con-
siderably increased the powers of the executive.
However, Hitler meant to obtain not just concessions ruefully
granted by a pliable old man, but plenary authority legally accorded
him by the supreme democratic institution: the Reichstag. Hitler pre-
pared his coup with the skill, the patience, and the astuteness for
which he was legendary.
THE UNIFICATION OF THE STATE I 107
"He possessed," Fest says, "an intelligence that included above all a
sure sense of ti1e rhythm to be observed in the making of decisions."
Hitler at fust did his best to shower attentions on the old field marshal,
who was fond of calling up the past With apparent extraordinary humil-
ity, on March 21, 1933, before the inauguration of the new Reichstag,
Hitler arranged a ceremony in Potsdrun, in Hindenburg's honor, that was
a masterpiece of meditation, majesty and beauty. There was something in
it to satisfy evecy vanity.
Hindenburg had retired his old unifonn of 1914-1918. In order that the
old mru1 might meet again with Gennans of his time, Hitler had rounded
up fr01n all over Gennany veterans of all the wars. From the war of 1871
(62 years before!) against Napoleon III. From the war of 1866 (67 years
before!) against Denmark. Even from the war of 1864 (69 years before!)
against tl1e Austrian Empire.
Unfortunately the occasion lacked a veteran or two from the Battle of
Leipzig (October 1813). Diligent searching in all the retirement homes of
the Reich had failed to turn one up. Still, for son1eone on the retiren1ent
list of 1911, to be surrounded by c01nrades fr01n 1864 had to be a heart-
wanning occasion.
Hitler bowed his head before the old man like a mere master of cere-
mony. He had arranged to preserve ti1e principal seat in the loge of the for-
mer Emperor Wilhelm II, unoccupied for fourteen years, so that
Hindenburg could halt before the empty armchair and make his salute,
his marshal's baton raised, as if tl1e mustachioed monarch were still there.
For Hindenburg, ill.is homage paid him was his hour supreme. He had
always remained tile loyal servant of the emperor. TI1e reminder of the de-
throned fonner sovereign overwhelmed his memocy. A year and a half
later, in tile shadow of his death agonies he would think that tile time of
the former court had come back again, and in his delusion would call
Hitler "Majesty"!
At Potsdam on that March 21, 1933 the octogenarian marshal had re-
lived the glorious past of the Gennan monarchy. Hitler had vecy quietly
had him descend into the crypt and place crowns before the tombs of his
old master and of Frederick the Great The old man's eyes were rinuned
With tears. Hitler was the first man since the defeat of 1918 to afford hiin
such joy. He regarded him with e1notion and leaned on his arm almost as
if Hitler had been his son. The young chancellor of the revolution had
touched his heart.
A month and a half earlier, Hindenburg had commissioned Papen,

Hugenberg, Neurath and the like to clamp restraints on Hitler "until he
hollered.11 That was now over. No one would manipulate the feeble old
man further. Hitler had won him over: in front of an empty annchair and
down inside a crypt.
By thus baptizing the new Reichstag in the historic Royal Palace of
Prussia, Hitler had also made some headway in winning over the Old
Guard, giving the old monarchist gentlemen the impression that he was
not altogether insensitive to the idea of a restoration.
Would that stable boy of a Hitler put the emperor back in the saddle?
The interim prudence of the new chancellor was calculated with pre-
cision."There is no need to destroy the existing institutions,11 Hitler gave
assurance, "until there is something better to put in their place."
He still for a time had need of men like von Papen and other capitalist
troglodytes. He kept them at his side while driving them around Potsdam
during the celebration, the festive city bedecked not only with Nazi ban-
ners but equally with the black-white-and-red flags of the empire of for-
mer times that had been resurrected for the occasion. Brass bands
bustled about sounding heroic marches fit to make their old chests swell
And so there, too, the scarcely camouflaged aversion to the parvenu
was softened. His troglodytes had been tamed and were ready to coop-
erate that same year.
But the anny especially had been the object of Hitler's most ardent
marks of consideration.
Hitler had an absolute need for the anny in 1933. The anny had only
very reluctantly tolerated his rise to power. Acorporal in the chancellory
had seemed intolerable to those haughty generals with icy eyes behind
their monocles. They felt they were the ones to be giving thought to the
state and considered themselves endowed with the royal prerogative of
supervising the political machinery.
On Jan. 31, 1933 they had not been called upon either to passjudgment
on Hitler or to ratify his nomination. The old field marshal had sternly
sent away Gen. von Hammerstein, who had come to bring him the non
possumus of the General Staff. Since then the latter had barely tolerated
the intruder.
A coup d'etat by that proud military caste could have swept him and
his party and his plans for the future all away.
With the military, by nature so imperious, he made use of the clever-
THE UNIFfCATION OF THE STATE I 109
ness that was his own special weapon. The anny was accorded a position
of honor at Potsdam. The troops presented anns on one side of the entry
to the royal palace, with the men of the SA lined up on the walk facing
them. Together they formed the guard of honor of a Germany restored to
harmony.
As for the generals, in their boots and trappings, gleaming with dec-
orations, their chests thrown out, they formed a heroic retinue for their
old commander, and all turned toward him like heliotropes following
the sun.
At last, after 14 years of being shunted aside in the democracy, they
had come out again into the light and the glory. So Corporal Hitler was
perhaps not so despicable as they had thought
The corporal, standing at attention, and in civilian clothes moreover,
had understood that it was important, in appearances at least, to keep
his distance.
Hitler, with head bowed, had won his armistice.
And the people?
In the twinkling of an eye, Hitler and Dr. Goebbels made the radio,
from which they had for so long been barred (and which had been used
by their enemies only in a mediocre fashion), their number one weapon.
It had taken only a month and a half for the radio to stir up public opinion,
retransmitting each of Hitler's speeches with a broadcast power hitherto
unknown.
At Potsdam, radio provided the most spectacular fireworks. Goebbels
had set up his microphones everywhere: in front of Hindenburg, behind
Hindenburg, in the royal crypt, close to the military brass bands, and even
on the ridges of houses, where tl1e announcers risked their skins. One of
them, notably enough, was a young Nazi deputy named Baldur von
Schirach, who in 1946 would find himself in the dock before the vengeful
Americans of the Nuremberg Tribunal.
All of Germany had been on the edge of their seats during the hours
of listening to the excited reporting of events. Millions of Gennans had
felt comforted at hearing the old hymns again and in following the de-
scription of Hindenburg's every move: the solemn, honored, venerated
Hindenburg. In the black days of the past, the old wanior had represented
hope. In his extreme old age he had become the symbol of a millenarian
Germany. It was, as historian Fest wrote, "the feast of reconciliation gor-
geously presented."
"Many functionaries, officers, and jurists of the bourgeois cl~ who

had evinced extreme reserve, abandoned their distrust." Hitler had found
the key to many a door that had hitherto been locked against him.
The Berlin press wrote on the following day: "National enthusiasm
11
swept over Germany yesterday like a great storm.
Potsdam had been a grandiose theatrical stage where everyone had
taken a part in the perfonnance, Hitler's adversaries and those indifferent
alike. Feverishly glued to their radios, all Germany had participated in
the spectacle, at first curious, then gripped by emotion.
11
"A strange mixture of tactician and visionary, Joachim Fest would
write, sizing up Hitler, tl1e extraordinary stage manager. For Hitler had
marshals, generals, and high dignitaries of no mean intelligence all on his
stage and had put them through tl1eir paces as though they had been tin
soldiers. But Hitler's field of vision extended far, far beyond tl1ese puppets
fora day.
In order to establish his new state in definitive form, Hitler now pro-
posed to obtain the official ratification of the Reichst.ag which would en-
sure his authority to the fullest extent for a period of several years. He
would not have legally admissible plenary powers, especially for so long
a period, unless the German constitution were first modified, and tl1at
would require public approval by two-thirds of the members of the par-
liament.
Well, Hitler, with 17,300,000 votes, had obtained a tot.al of 288 seats in
the elections of March 1933 for the new Reichstag. His allies of the mo-
ment, the delegates of Papen and Hugenberg (charged with keeping an
eye on him), with 4,750,000 votes, had garnered another 52 seats, making
a total of 340 deputies.
Even deducting the invalidated Communist vote, the opposition, hard-
core or moderate, mustered 232 members: 126 socialists (Social Democ-
rats), 92 Centrum (Catholic) deputies, and 14 others.
In a normal vote (half of those voting plus one), Hitler would have car-
ried easily. But to alter the constitution so as to give him full powers, he
had to capture a majority of two-thirds. Those two-thirds represent.ed 376
votes, 36 more than he could count on.
At first sight, then, approval was impossible. The Centrum, the na-
tional refuge of sanctimonious hypocrites, had for 10 years made a show
of outspoken anti-Hitlerism, unhesitatingly using religion as a partisan
weapon and denying religious burial to National Socialists assasc;;inated
by Conununist killers. Hitler, with the 3$istance of Goering, who was the
National Socialist president of the Reichstag, was going to have to baptize
that holy congregation.
The president of the Centrum was Monsignor Kaas, a squat and
pudgy prelate who, in lieu of guiding souls, had always found the col-
lecting and hoodwinking of voters more exciting and thus much pre-
ferred. Hitler piously flattered him and dangled before him the promise
of a rapprochement between the Nazi state and the Church, a promise
moreover that was real and which Hitler made effective the following
summer. The prelate, beguiled, imagined that he was going to baptize
anew the repentant son.
Between the incense and the candles, the Centrurn was seduced. A
few of the independents also yielded. When it came to a vote, the plenary
powers were accorded to Hitler by the enonnous majority of 441 to 94:
Hitler had won constitutionally not just two-thir~, but 82.44 percent of
the votes of the Assembly. The "Law of Plenary Powers" thus approved
granted to Hitler for four years virtually absolute authority over the leg-
islative as well as t11e executive affairs of the government
The five paragraphs of that "Law for the Alleviation of the Misery of
the People'' were brief and to the point:
1. Laws may be promulgated by the government of the Reich

apart from the procedures provided by the Constitution.
2. Laws promulgated by the government of the Reich may deviate
from the Constitution provided they do not have as their aim a mod-
ification of the Reichstag or of the Reichsrat. The duties of the Pres-
ident of the Reich are not modified.
3. Laws promulgated by the government of the Reich will be rat-
ified by the Chancellor and published in the "Official Journal." They
become effective on the day following publication.
4. Treaties concluded with foreign states do not need to be rati-
fied by tl1e legislative body. The government itself will publish any
regulations necessary for their execution.
5. Tilis law, valid until the 1st of April of 1937, will become effec-
tive on the day of its promulgation. It will be abrogated if another
goven1ment succeeds the present government
Berlin, 24 March 1933
Von Hindenburg, Hitler, Frick
von Neurath, Krosigk
The parliamentary democracy, in the constitutional exercise of its

powers, had thus settled, on March 24, 1933, the problem of the authori-
tarian state. Now it remained t;o provide a solution to the problems of the
states, that is t;o say, the disorderly horde of 22 regional st.ates, as well as
the 52 governments of the Free Cities, the hundred s of local ministers,
and the 2,400 deputies busily astir in the 22 separate parliamentary dis-
tricts. For the most part they were nullities, and there was no love lost be-
tween them; but for 14 years, every time there had been a chance to
thwart the central government in Berlin, they had become as one.
It was inconceivable that a strong government such as the one Hitler
had just set up could continue with those 2,000+ carping politicasters
questioning its every move.
As a matter of fact Gemiany was tired of that frittering away of author-
ity, of the perpetual contradictions, the pettiness, the discord, and the an-
archy for which in the last analysis it was the people who paid.
"It is a fact," wrote French historian Benoist-Mechin, "that the unifica-
tion of the states and the Reich answere d one of the most profound
aspirations of the German people. They had had enough of being tom
apart by the constant threats of secession of the provincial governments.
For centuries they had dreamed of being part of a single community."
(Hist.oire de l'.Armee Allemande, Vol. ID, p.111)
It looked easy, since public opinion demanded the abolishment of the
administrative mess. But a reform of that nature necessarily would bruise
the vanity of thousands and collide head-on with many very special local
interests.
A man who is a council president or a minister, even if just of a re-
gional state, does not easily resign himself to being no more than a private
citizen, t;o becoming once again a provincial lawyer scampering to the
courthouse with coattails flying, or mayhap only a sausage maker. And
the 2,400 deputies were bitter as well at losing the good life they had
known and loved. Gone the homage, the bowing and scraping, the deco-
rations, the junkets at public expense, the discreet gratuities that were
ever so comforting!
Who among us does not make a wry face when swallowing bitter med-
icine?
It had t.o be; for Hitler had his eyes fixed on the national goal: a unified
Reich.
That did not mean of course that in eliminating the regional adrnin-
istrations Hitler had any desire to have done witl1 the distinctive identities
of the several provinces of tl1e Reich. On tl1e contnuy, he believed tl1at tl1e
life of a count.ly ought never to be n1onopolized by its one, often artificial,
capital city, but should ratl1er be nourished and constantly renewed by
U1e bloonung of dozens of centers of culture in regions rich in tl1eir varied
manners and 1nores and tl1e legacy of their past.
He believed tl1at the nation was tl1e harmonious co1tjunction of tl1ese
profound and original variations. And that a state conscious of it.s real
powers ought to pro1note such variety, not smother it.
The scattering of political power had not favored tl1e variety but had
on the contrary dilninished it, depriving it of the cohesion a large commu-
nity brings.
The 22 separate administrative entities, rivals of tl1e central govern-
ment and often of each other, were a source of disorder. A nation must
consist of regions that know and esteem each other and that gain mutual
enriclunent from tl1eir interlinking rather than each withdrawing into a
culture tl1at is strangled by an exclusive and restrictive provincialism.
And only a strong power could assure the flowering of all of the separate
regions within a single collective order.
In sum, what Hitler intended was that each region should bring its
share of original culture to the totality of a Gennan Reich that had put an
end to tile two dozen factitious administrations.
From 1871 to 1933 tlle various rulers of Germany had all run into the
obstacle of tllis political particularisn1. Even a leader as gifted as Bis-
marck had been unable to achieve the unification of the twenty-two dis-
parate states and the 45 Free Cities all like weathercocks on their
respective towers.
And now, where the leaders of the old empire and later of the Weilnar
Republic had failed, or had not dared to take tl1e risk, Hitler, in a few
months was going to convert that division and discord into a potent and
effective unity.
Hitler was hardly more than moved into his office overlooking the
chancellery garden, where squirreJs cracked nuts in tl1e trees and at times
even leaped into the building it.self, when he had a law in hand ordering
tlle unification of the lands of the Reich.
TI1e first of the states that would be made to toe the line was Bavaria,
which up to that point had been the bellwether of the more belligerent
separatists and hidebound monarchists.
Hitler's pi~ were no sooner la1own titan several of tlte Bavarian min-
isters devised a plan to resurrect front retiren1ent tlte old fogy, ex-Prince
Ruprecht, the sruue man who in Noventber of 1923 as an ordinary private
citi?.en had played a part, witl1 a good deal of bragging, in blocking Hitler's
putsch.
11,e Chru1cellor on tJrls occasion answered their little plot with sudden
and cn1Shing force, bringing the whole of tlte Bavarian administration to
heel in one night. ht tl1e 1norning Lt. Gen. von Epp was named Commis-
sioner of U,e Reich in Munich.
Ahnost all the otlter regional states fell by tltemselves, like a house of
cards.
TI1e most difficult state to liquidate had been Prussia, an enormous
bastion (a third of Gennany) lying right in tlte very heart of the country.
}>rus.ga tntly constituted a state within tlte state, a special government.
It had held Chancellor Bruening completely in check in 1931, and Bruning
had suffered a humiliating defeat at the hands of the Marxists, even
though tlteir party had just been beaten to a pulp by Hitler's candidates
in the Prussian elections.
Chancellor von Papen, too, after a year of shilly~shallying and delay,
found he had to come t.o grips with Prussia, which was very nearly as
strong as the central government.
When Hitler had obtained the chancellorship, he had been obliged -
because Hindenburg demanded it-to let this same von Papen have the
direction of the Prussian state; and it was only with great effort on his
part that he had managed t.o have Goering named assistant to von Papen,
as minister of the interior.
The aut.onomy of tlte Prussian government, more than any other, had
t.o be liquidated if the central government were not t.o be subject at every
moment to defeat in its own capital.
The matter was especially delicate due to the fact of keeping von
Papen, the Junker, in tlte Prussian presidency. But to drive him out was
to risk being ousted himself by tlte old field marshal.
Hitler at tltat point swpassed himself in versatility and guile. Within a
montlt, by dint of flattery von Papen let himself be gently pushed t.oward
tlte door. Hitler all but dictated for him the letter dated April 7, 1933 in
which tlte vice-chancellor acknowledged tltat tlte Law on the Unification
of tlte Lands of tlte Reich "was a legal edifice destined t.o be of great his-
toric importance in tlte development of the Gennan Reich.,,
That being so, von Papen further recognized that "the dualism existing
between the Reich and Prussia" had to come to an end. In his letter he
even compared Hitler to Prince Otto von Bismarck.
Hitler soothed his wounded pride. He declared publicly that he would
never have been able to undertake the political reunification of the Reich
alone, that the great architect of the achievement had been von Papen.
Without turning a hair, he wrote to Feldmarschall von Hindenburg:
In assuming the functions of Commissioner of the Reich in

Prussia during the difficult period following the 30th of January,
Herr von Papen has deserved vecy great credit for contributing so
strongly to the working out of a strict coordination between the
policies of the Reich and those of the regional states. His collab-
oration with the Cabinet of the Reich, t.o which he will henceforth
be able to devote himself completely, will be of priceless assis-
tance to me. The feelings I have for him are such that I rejoice in
having the benefit of his cooperation, which will be of inestimable
value tome.
At this little masteIJ}iece of hypocrisy, the marshal responded with an-

other little masteIJ}iece, this one addressed to von Papen:
Dear Herr von Papen:

I have just accepted your request that you be relieved of your
duties as commissioner of the Reich for Prus.5ia I take this oppor-
tunity to thank you, in the name of the Reich and in my own
name, for the eminent service which you have rendered the na-
tion by eliminating the dualism existing between the Reich and
Prussia and by imposing the idea of a common political direction
of the Reich and the regional states. I have learned with satisfac-
tion that you will henceforth be able to devote all your energies
to the government of the Reich.
With feelings of sincere comradeship, I remain your devoted
Von Hindenburg,
President of the Reich
In 24 hours, ex-Chancellor von Papen had lost the sole effective power
he possessed. He was still-for how long?-in the inner circle of Hitler's
govenunent. But what was he really otl,er tlmn a silent acco1npanist, witl1
people snilling behind his back?
Hitler inunediately nruned Goering in his stead as the Pn1ssiru1 Presi-
dent of tlle Council, getting on witll tl1e burial witl1out delay.
Other intennents followed in a funereal procession. And Hitler placed
a votive crown on each coffin as the lid was nailed down.
The process was regulated like a ballet.
Act One: The regional parliamentary power was transferred s1noothly
into tl1e hands of 1nen who had Hitler's confidence.
Act 'Iwo: Those 1nen rumounced the acceptru1ce of the "Law of Unifi-
cation."
Act Three: The regional parliament proclailned the dissolution of tlle
local state, now beco1ne unnecessary.
Act Four: To adnlinister tlle region thus politically absorbed, Hitler
appointed a Sta.Ulw.lter, or conmlissioner of tl1e Reich, who was perma-
nently charged witl1 "attending to tlle execution of tlle political directives
dictated by tlle Chancellor."
In tlle Grand Duchies of Baden and Saxony tllere had been a few ver-
bal sldnnishes, but tlley had been quickly squelched.
As for tlle Free City of Hamburg (population a 1nillion and a halt), long
a socialist stronghold, it had grumbled a bit for fonn's sake, imagining
tllat it was being asked to cut its own throat, but only a few hours of ne-
gotiations were required to make it see tlle light.
In a few weeks tlle circuit had been completed, and tl1e 22 regional
states were only a memory.
Even before the end of 1933 Hitler had thus succeeded in transforming
the faltering power of the Reich into a fonnidable instrument of action,
legitimized on March 23, 1933, by the overwhelming 1najority vote of ap-
proval by the Reichstag.
Thanks to that approval, and by virtue of the Law of Special Powers,
he had been able constitutionally to efuninate tlle 22 rival states, the con-
stellation of 45 Free Cities, and the some 2,400 regional deputies, who
had distinguished tl1emselves most notably in their asse1nblies by their
pompous uselessness.
"It all went much faster than we had dared hope," Goebbels pointed
out with delight and a shade of sarcasm.
In six paragraphs of only a few lines the "Law for the Rebuilding of tl1e
Reich" had prescribed the details of tl1e change:
1. Representation of the regional states is abolished.

2. (a) The sovereign right.s of the regional states are trans-
ferred to the goverrunent of the Reich.
2. (b) The governments of the regional states are subject to
the government of the Reich.
3. The St,atthalter are subject to the authority of the Minister
of the Interior of the Reich.
4. TI1e government of tl1e Reich may modify the constitutional
light of the regional states.
5. The Minister of the Interior will issue the legal and admin-
istrative decrees necessary for the application of this law.
6. This law will become effective on the day of its official pub-
lication.
Berlin, 30 January 1934,
Von Hindenburg, Hitler, Frick
Bismarck, the Iron Chancellor, would never have thought of a reuni-

fication of that kind, within an authoritarian state so finnly hierarchical
in organization. Hitler had made the attempt, and he had succeeded. Ger-
many had now attained to a power more mighty than any she had before
known in her history. And had done so, moreover, by democratic means.
"Our power," Hitler could tl1en declare, "no longer belon~ to any ter-
ritorial fraction of the Reich, nor to any single class of the nation, but to
the people in their totality."
TI1e explanation was offered after 1945 that the German people had
lost their heads. In any event, tl1ey act.ed of their own free will. They were
not resigned; they were entl1usiastic. That is a historical fact
"For the first time since tl1e last days of the monarchy," historian
Joachim Fest was forced to adnlit, "the majority of the Germans now had
the feeling tl1at they could identify with the state" (Fest, op.cit., p. 76).
But what about the political parties?
Because even if an authoritarian state had just transformed all of the
tens of millions of Bavarians and Saxons and Prussians and residents of
Hamburg all into citizens of one and the same Reich, with only one ruler;
and even if the anthill of petty stat.es, all more or les.5 separatist in nature,
had been leveled, there still remained in Germany the political parties.
To be sure, tl1ey had been discredited. But where appetites, however dis-
sembled, remained hearty, ainbitions could arise again and impenitent
politicians seek to erode anew tl1e underpinnings of the state.

They were scarcely in a position to complain. They themselves, on
the preceding 23rd of March, had voted in the overwhelming majority for
the "Law of Plenary Powers."
Now their wings had been clipped, their prerogatives taken away.
They no longer served any purpose, were an encumbrance on the political
system. They were useless, superfluous.
How would Hitler get rid of them?
CHAPTER
UNIFICATION OF THE lABOR UNIONS
ne power besides the political parties and the senli-au-

tonomous cities and states still existed: the Marxist trade
unions. For a long time they had represented the most im-
portant force in the Reich. Theoretically they were only a
social force, but at every opportunity also a political force,
funlishing Communism with its militants and the Social Democrats with
the bulk of their voters.
For 15 years they had been a constant and fanatical pressure group,
stirring up tunnoil in the streets and fonnulating ever greater demands.
They had also long provided the Left with funds in the millions, funds
that were continually replenished by the contributions of millions of
union members.
But there again, even well before the party-ridden Weimar Republic
collapsed, disillusion had spread through tJ1e masses of the working peo-
ple. They were starving. The hundreds of socialist and Conununist depu-
ties were standing idly by, incapable of bringing about tl1e slightest
bette1ment in the desperate situation of the proletariat
They had not attempted or even suggested anytlling that might have
been able to remedy the distress of the people even partially. No plan for
large-scale public works. No industrial restructuring. No search for mar-
kets abroad.
And, moreover, no energetic resistance to the pillaging by foreign
countries that was sucking away in unending billions tl1e last resources
of tlle Reich: this in consequence of the 'Ireaty of Versailles tliat tl,e Ger-
1nan socialists had voted to ratify in June of 1919 and which tl,ey had
never had the guts to oppose effectively tl1ereafter.
The few modifications wrested with great difficulty from the rapa-
cious Allies had been achieved by a conservative, Gustav Stresemann,
the mhlister of foreign affairs, who, although always without support
or even sabotaged by tl1e parties, fought stubbornly to liberate the
Reich despite his faltering health, bis fainting fits, and the goiter grow-
ing ever n1ore enonnous that was knotted around his neck like a boa
constrictor. This dying n1an was the only one who had attempted to
pry tl1e foreign talons fron1 the flesh of the Gennan people, and he was
in no way a Marxist
h1 1930, 1931 and 1932, Gem1an workers had watched the disaster
grow: the nun1ber of unemployed rise from two million to three, to four,
to five, tl1en to six million; the unemployment benefits fall lower and
lower, or completely disappear.
Everywhere one saw dajection and privation, emaciated mothers, clill-
dren fading away in sordid lodgings, thousands of beggars in long sad
lines.
The failure of tile leftist leaders t.o act, or their incapacity, or their total
lack of ~itivity had stupefied the working class. Of what use were such
leaders with tlleir empty heads and empty hearts-and often enough full
pockets?
Already, well before Jan. 30, 1933, thousands of workers had joined up
with Hitler's dynamic fonnations that were always hard at it in the society
where they were most needed, never afraid t.o give their full support to
strikes tllat displeased the bourgeoisie. And Hitler, himself a fonner
worker and a plain man like themselves, wanted to eliminate unemploy-
ment root and branch; he wanted not just to defend the laborers' right to
work, but t.o make their occupation one of honor, t.o make them re-
spected, and to integrate them fully int.o a living commwtlty of all the Ger-
mans who had fonnerly been set up class against class.
Hitler's vict.orious troops in January of 1933 were largely proletarian
in character, composed of t.ough customers and battlers who socially no
longer counted.
Membership in the Marxist unions had fallen off enonnous]y: Among
13 million socialist and Communist voters in 1932, no more than five mil-
lion were union members.
UNIFICATION OF THE LABOR UNIONS I 121
Moreover,. las.5itude
th . and . discouragement were such that many were
not even paying err uruon dues any longer.
. The other eight million had withdrawn into their shells, or moved on
mto the ranks of the SA.
The socialist leaders had lost confidence and were beginning to won-
der if perhaps the millions of deserters were the ones who had seen things
clearly.
Soon they wouldn't wonder any longer.
Even before Hitler had obtained the Reichstag vote on his Law of Ple-
nary Powers, the Federation of Marxist Unions had begun to rally to the
National Socialist side.
None other than historian Joachim Fest writes: "On March 20 the pres-
idency of the federation addres.5ed a kind of message ofl.oyalty to Hitler."
It was better than that The unions had always clamored to have the
1st of May recognized as a worker's holiday, but the Weimar Republic had
never acceded to their request. Hitler, never missing an opportunity,
seized this one with both hands, not just approving the reasonable de-
mand but amplifying it: He proclaimed the 1st of May a national holiday.
Even as the Socialist Party had gone from its anti-Hitler vote in the
Reichstag (March 23, 1933) to a pro vote (May 12, 1933), the union leaders
made a 180-degree tum in only a few weeks. What they had begged every
government for 15 years to grant them, Hitler was turning into a holiday
celebrated by the entire nation, just like that! He announced that in order
to magnify labor, he himself would organize the biggest meeting in Ger-
many's history on the 1st of May at the Tempelhof airfield in Berlin.
Caught unprepared but on the whole very pleased to take advantage of
the decision to throw in their lot with National Socialism and, what is
more, to become an active element in that demonstration whose like a
Marxist worker could scarcely imagine, the union leaders called together
the ~ of tJ,eir leftist members and invited them to go, with banners fly-
ing, to Tempelhof on the 1st of May, and acclaim Hitler.
I attended that memorable meeting myself.
As early as nine o'clock in the morning giant columns, some of work-
ers, others of young people, beating a cadence on the pavement of Berlin's
great avenues, had started off toward the airfield whither Hitler had called
together all of Germany. Yes, Germany, for the entire country would fol-
low the popular ceremony as it was transmitted by all the radio stations.
By noon hundreds of thousands of workers-Hitlerites and non-Hit-
122 I HITLF.R DEMOCRAT
lerites-were spread out. over the vast plain. Itnpeccable order was 1nain-
tained. Hundreds of improvised tables, set up by the party, provided U1e
ever increa5ing crowds of people witl1 sandwiches, sausages and 1nugs of
beer at cost~ to 1>ut new heart into those aniving.
All of course wel'e standing.
Tiley would remain standing for 12 or 14 hours.
A fabulous speaker's platfonu stood out against the sky, three stolies
high, ftruuboyant witll immense flags, as ilnpressive as a naval shipyard.
As tlle hours went. by, thousands of iinportant personages were seated
there, the diplomatic corps in full force, honored foreign guests. At close
of day a million and a half spectators were massed to tl1e outennost edges
of the~ of the iimuense flat area, tlle anny and the people all nungled
togetl,er. Fanfares were sounding. It wasn't a political n,eeting any longer;
it was a festival, a sort of fantastic scene as shown in Brueghel's 17ie Ket-
·mess, where 1nembers of the nliddle class, generals and workers 1net and
fratemized, all Genuans and all equals.
Night ainved, and witll it Hitler. His speaker's platfonn was like the
prow of a girultsb.ip. The hundreds of beacons illunlinating the sea of hu-
nwlity had been extinguished. Suddenly Hitler alone burst forth fro1n the
dark, ,vay up in tbe air, in tlle dazzling glare of spotlights.
In the dark, a group of one kind or another could easily have set up a
racket or othern'ise sabotaged tl1e meeting. A third perhaps of the people
present had been socialists or Conunwlists only tJrree rnontllS previously.
But not a single hostile voice was heard during tlle entire ceremony. It
·was canied off to uruversal acclamation.
Ceremony is tlle rigl1t word for it It was an ahnost magical ceremony.
Hitler and Goebbels had no equals in tlle arranging of dedicatory cere-
monies of this sort.
First there were popular songs, tl1en great Wagnerian hynms to grip
the audience. Gennany has a passion for orchestral music, and Wagner
tapped into the deepest and most secret vein of the German soul, of its
romanticism, its inborn sense of the powerful and the grand. Meanwhile
the hundreds of speaker's platfonn ~ floated in tlle night at the top of
their poles, caught in arrows of light
It was then that Hitler advanced to the rostrum. For the crowd at the
end of the field, his face could have appeared no larger than a butterfly's
wing. But his words at once flooded across the acres of people making up
his audience.
UNIFICATION OF THE LABOR UNIONS I 123
A Latin audience would have preferred a voice less harsh, more deli-
cately expres.5ive. But there was no doubt that it answered to the psy-
chology of tl1e Gennan people.
The Gennans have rarely had the good fortune to ertjoy the enchant-
1nent of tl1e Word. Gennany has always had plenty of ponderous speakers
passionately fond of notes and conformity. Hitler, as an orator, was a
prodigy, the greatest orator of the century. Above all he had what the or-
dinary n1m1 lacks: a projection of power that is still a mystery-tl1e doc-
tors will perhaps try to figure it out one day-that had some strange touch
in it of the 1nedium or tl1e enchanter.
Whatever crowd he was addres.5ing felt itself as though seized, trans-
fixed. It reacted .in turn to this projection of power, sending it back, thus
establishing in the course of myriad tiny exchanges a current with the or-
ator that was equally give and take.
You would have to have heard Hitler to understand this phenomenon,
but it was the very basis of the conquest of the masses by the one man in
tile Reich who pos.5es.5ed this sovereign gift. His words, his programs, his
anger, his irony all were transported and transfigured in that projection
tilat was like lightning. Tens of millions of Gennans were affected by it,
and were enlightened and inflamed by Hitler's fire.
By tile time tile cheering had died away, the hundreds of thousands of
"non-Hitlerites" who had come to Te1npelhof at the bidding of the Marxist
Trade Union Federation were conquered just like the others, just like the
SA 1nen they had been fist-fighting for the past ten years.
The great human sea surged back fro1n Ten1pelhof to Berlin. A million
and a half people had co1ne in perfect order, and tiley went back in per-
fect order. TI1ere were no bottlenecks to halt tile cars and motor coaches.
That rigorous yet joyful discipline of a contented people was in itself a
source of wonder. Everything had gone off as smoothly as though on ball
bearings.
TI1e me1nory of that fabulous crowd thronging back down to the cen-
ter of Berlin, the capital of tl1e Reich, will never leave me. A great many
were on foot Their faces were now different faces, as though they had
been invested with a strange and totally new life. The non-Gennans in
the crowd were as though stunned, and just as impres.5ed as Hitler's fel-
low countrymen.
The French ambassador noted:
The foreigners on tl,e speaker's platfonn as guests of honor

,vere not alone in carrying away tJ,e impression of a truly beauti-
ful and wondetful public festival)an ilnpression tllat was created
by tlle regime's genius for organi7.ation>by tlle nighttilne display
of unifomlS, by tJ,e play of lights, tl,e rhytlun of tlle nlusic) by the
flags and tJ1e colorful fireworks; and tl1ey were not alone in think-
ing that a breath of reconciliation and unity was passing over the
Tilird Reich. •1t is our wish," Hitler had exclaimed, as tl,ough tak-
ing heaven as his witness) "to get along together and to struggle
together as brotllel'St so tllat at tlle hour when we shall come be-
fore God, we nlight say to hint: 'See, Lord, we have changed. The
Gernlan people are no longer a people ashained) a people mean
and cowardly and divided. No, Lord! The Gem1an people have
become strong in tlleir spirit, in their will, in their perseverance,
in their acceptance of any sacrifice. Lord) we remain faithful to
Thee! Bless our struggle!'" [Fram;ois-Poncet, Souvenirs d'une
ambassade aBerlin, p.128.J
\Vho else could have made such an incantatory appeal without making
him.self look ridiculous?
Nor had a politician ever spoken straight out with such faith and such
force of the rights of workers, or laid out in such clear terms the social
plan he was going to cany out in behalf of the common people.
On the very next day the newspaper of the proletarian left, the
Union Journal) describing the meeting in which at least two-thirds--
a million-of those attending were workers, summed it up: "This May
1st was victory day."
With this winning over of tlle workers, what further rhyme or reason
was there in the thousands of Marxist cells that had for so long poisoned
the social life of the Reich and which in any case had not exactly pre-
vented anything or produced anything or built anything?
Thing.5 went forward for Hitler without a hitch. Afew hours after that
"victory" at the TumpeJhof airfield, he was able quite peacefully to take
over the control and complete direction of all the union organizations, of
their premises, their enterprises, their banks. The time of Marxist anarchy
was at an end, and a single union organization would henceforth embody
the collective will of all the workers of the Reich.
"This government," Hitler had proclaimed, "is a government of the
UNIFICATION OF TIIE I..ABOH UNIONS I 125
people." At any rate he was in the process of 1naking it becon1e so in great

strides.
Hitler knew very well that all was not yet won, tl1at Moscow in partic-
ular would not drop her guard-or her guns. It would take more than
words. It would take so1ne accomplislunents. That and only that would
make tl1e winning over of tl1e proletariat so1netlling more than the enthu-
siasm shown at 1neetings, would make it lasting.
How would Hitler be able to solve the proble1n that no one else pre-
viously had been able to solve, either in Gennany or outside of Gennany:
putting the six million une1nployed back to work?
What would he do about such things as wages? Working hours?
Leisure time? Housing? How would he succeed, in law and in fact, in mak-
ing tl1e rights and the dignity of the worker be respected at long last?
How would the very condition of men's lives be materially, morally,
and one 1night even say spiritually transfonned? How would men's lives
be enlarged within a new society freed of the inertia, irtjustices and prej-
udices of the past?
"National Socialis1n," Adolf Hitler had declared from the start, "has its
nli.ssion and its hour; it is not just a passing move1nent but a phase of his-
tory."
Having now in his hands the real instnunents of true power-an au-
thoritarian state of regions solidly welded together with the body of the
country-Hitler had promptly shaken himself free of any tutelage of the
old iinpotent political parties. He was direcfu1g and inspiring a cohesive
labor force that was no longer split into a thousand rivulets but n1nning
in an tnlStoppable streain.
Hitler was sure of hiinself, of the force of his own strengtl1 of convic-
tion. He did not intend to resort to the use of physical force, but ratl1er to
conquer morally, one by one, the millions of GennailS who were still his
adversaries from the previous year or who even hated him.
For years he had carefully paved the way for his conquest. He had
likewise decided on every detail of the t.ransfonnation of the state, not
only with respect to unification of the administrative stn1ctures, but look-
ing beyond to tl1e st;ages of realization of each point of his social prograin.
He would induce even the most refractory to go along with hiin. Long
before he had said: "The hour will come when the 15 million people who
now hate us will be solidly behind us and will acclaiin with us the new re-
vival we shall create together."
The anny of converts was already fonning its ranks.

Historian Joachim Fest was compelled to adnlit tl,e fact witl,out beat-
ing about. the bush or quibbling: "Hitler rapidly acquired tl,e legitimate
character of a statesman who inspired respect and 1nerited more tl,an
the sneering nan,e of demagogue. Those who resisted tlle desire to sup-
port him tllat ~ spreading like an epidenlic fonned an ever sn1aller mi-
nority (Ibid., p. 42)."
\Vhat a historical tribute!
Even a left-wing writer like Kurt 'l\1cholsky, sensing tl1at the tide was
sweeping everytlling away, acknowledged it in these vivid tenns: "You
can't tell tile ocean to go away."
However, things were still in a partially negative stage.
Prinwily what Hitler had done was to clear the way. Now tlle fully
positive period,~ awaited.
"From now on," Hitler had asserted in the Reichstag, "We National So-
cialists are going to open the way for the worker to obtain what he re-
. "
qmres.
Would Hitler, too, like so many others who had failed before him, or
would fail after him, find this too tough a nut to crack?
The great ttagedy of unemployment in particular was the number one
concern of the entire country. It was an obst.acle blocldng the way for tlle
proletariat like a new stone of Sisyphus.
1
\\ ould Hitler be able to face up to this nagging problem upon which
the entire social future of the German people depended? Above all, would
he be able to resolve the problem?
CHAPTER
WHERE TO FIND THE BllllONS
en Hitler, silent and preoccupied, stood at his Chan-

cellery window on the night of Jan. 30, 1933 receiving
the cheers of the crowd, he had been seized with anxi-
ety, and not without reason. Dr. Schacht has related, "I
had the impression that he was a man fairly crushed by
the weight of the responsibility he was taking on ... That profound emo-
tional upheaval of which I was a witness could not possibly have been
mere play-acting: It betrayed true feelings." (Iljalmar Schacht, Memoires
d'un ma,gicien, vol. II, p. 52)
But Hitler was a man capable of sunnounting that emotion and leaving
it behind him. Faced with a particularly agonizing national tragedy-im-
mense unemployment, general misery, almost total industrial stagna-
tion-that no other politician of any party had been able even to
ameliorate, and which on the contrary the country had seen grow ever
more grim, this leader of the German revolution was a man of purpose
and will.
Hitler had no sooner been voted the plenary powers than he rolled up
his shirtsleeves and began to carry out plans which he had long since laid
out and matured.
Unlike all the other responsible-or irresponsible-politicians of 20th-
century Europe, Hitler did not believe that fighting for the economic
health of his country consisted in impassively swallowing one reverse
after another, standing idly by while the nation's industries were dying, or
128 I HITLER OEMOCltAT
watching millions of unemployed workers trrunp the nru1u,v streets in

swanus.
For tJte acting politi~ of the dc1nocracies, tltere had been only one
recommended solution: a drastic reduction in expenditures. Not only in
tJ,ose of the state but in those required for private investlnent as well.
'llghten your belt! Let. go of your pennies only one by one!
nms it was u,at the Gcnnany before Hitler had cut salaiies by 25 per-
ce.ni limited payment of unemployinent benefits to six 1nonths, ai1d re-
ducecl by five-sLxths the total runount of private investn1ents.
n,e countJy's standard of living had collapsed like a balloon. At tlle
end ofsix months the unemployed obviously had not found new en1ploy-
ment. And tltey were joined by long lines of new tu1e1nployed.
Deprived ofall me3l\S of subsistence, they gravitated to tl1e welfare of-
fices.
People spent. les-5 and less, with the ineluctable consequence that the
indusmes producing goods for constunption closed their doors one after
anotl1er for lack of orders, thereby sending thousands 1nore une1nployed
into the streets. h1 193'2, Gennany's industlies were languishing, witl1 pro-
duction reduced by half.
Pm'ate investinents had fallen to a discouraging level: barely 500 mil-
lion marks per year instead of tl1e nom1al 3 billion. No new blood had
been iJtjected into the industrial syste1u, no workplaces modernized.
The government no longer had any n1oney available. Fiscal receipts
had fallen to 10 billion n1arks, while the meager and short-term une1n-
ploy1nent benefits alone absorbed two-thirds of the total. The situation
deteriorated n1ore and more, with no solution possible so long as the gov-
enunent persisted in its policies of fence-sitting, timidity and fear.
\\'hat was needed was not waiting for an indefinite tune for tl1e eco-
nomic machinery to be put back in operation tl1anks to improved fiscal
receipts resulting from a highly problematical business recovery; what
was needed was to bring about a renewal of activity by dint of boldness
and by investments which would be created fron1 the ground up using
imagination and decision.
And that, Hitler had long understood.
You could combat unemployment, elhninate it, only by giving indusuy
tl1e financial means to start up anew, to modernize, and in tl1e process to
create millions of new jobs.
You would not reestablish the nonnal rate of consumption, let alone
\VHEHE TO FIND THE BILLIONS I 129
increase it, unless you put an end to the starvation-level allowances that
made purchases of any kind a vittual hnpossibility. On the contrary, it
was going to be necessary to step up production and sales because of the
retun1 to work-whether in factories or offices or banks-of tJ1e six mil-
lion une1nployed who would thereupon beco1ne six million purchasers.
The only way to get over the stage of economic slump was by putting
industry in step with tJ1e tiines and by sthnulating the invention of new
products.
For exrunple, Germany had no gasoline. It was necessary to increase
tl1e national production of synthetic gasoline to the maximum. The tech-
nique had been discovered, but it needed to be exploited on the greatest
possible scale.
The sarne applied to natural rubber. Germany possessed a splendid
substitute in "buna" (polyn1erized butadiene). Plans for all-out manufac-
turing of it, however, were still sitting in the file cabinets.
For every hundred products invented, scarcely one got beyond the
dust of administrative files. Moreover one could and should at all cost
stiinulate new kinds of labor and industrial activity by carrying out great
public works projects.
Germany's roads were mediocre; it was essential to improve them,
and above all to mark out, like great lifelines all across the Reich, millions
of kilometers of highways that would rapidly be productive and bring
about the exchange and consumption of goods, while at the same time
aiding communication among Germans hitherto withdrawn in their sep-
arate regions.
Highways would also mean cars. Germany was at the bottom of the
list in the production of auto1nobiles. Five tin1es less than that of the
French!
Ten years prior to 1933, while in his Landsberg prison cell, Hitler had
already had the conception of a formidable system of highways. He had
conceived and hitnself designed the little popular car that would travel
them. It would be called the "Volkswagen." He had even gone so far as to
detennine its outline: "The new car should have the shape of a June bug.
One needs only to look at nature to obtain aerodynrunic lines."
Up until 1933, a car was a privilege of the rich. It was not within the
reach financially of t11e 1niddle class, much less of the workingman. The
"Volkswagen," costing ten runes less than the motorized coaches of ear-
lier years, would beco1ne a popular work tool, a source of pleasure after
130 HITLER DEMOCRAT
work, a n1ean.~ of unwinding, of getting so1ne fresh air, and of discoveling,

thanks to tlte new highways, a ntagnificent country tltat was virtually un-
lmown to Ute Gemtan worker.
Hitler 1ueant front Ute beginning for Utat econonlical car to be built
by tlte nilllions. And fron1 it caine tl1e creation of a new industry, a very
considerable cre.ation which would inevitably beco1ne one of the greatest
cent.ers of Ute econonlic life and one of tl1e largest e1nployers of n1an-
power in the new Reich.
Plans for Ute construction of popular housing develop1nents, or of
grandiose public buildings, had also been co1npleted by Hitler, drawing
pencil in hand, during the period of his hnprisonment
We still have rough sketches ranging from groups of individual
worker's houses with tlleir own gardens--hwtdreds of tllousands of them
would be built-to a plan for a covered stadium in Berlin dedicated to
public use. And even a hall of congress, Wllike any otller in the world,
that would symbolize tl\e grandeur of the National Socialist revolution.
"A building with a monumental dome," Werner Maser explained in
one of his books, "the plan of which he drew while he was writing Mein
Kantpf, having a span of 46 meters, a height of 220 meters, a diameter of
250 meters, and with a capacity of 150,000 to 190,000 people standing.
The interior of the building would have been 17 times larger than Saint
Peter's Church in Rome."
"That hall," Reich Minister and architect Albert Speer gave his assur-
ance, "was not just an idle dream impos.5ible of achievement"
Hitler's imagination had tllus been teeming witll many projects for a
long time. And with plans that were to be realized as well.
There were entrepreneurs, managers and technicians available. Hitler
~ not going to improvise.
The historian Werner Maser, altllough quite anti-Hitler, like nearly all
of his colleagues-how else would tlley have fowtd publishers?-has ac-
knowledged=
"From tlle beginning of his political career, he [Hitler) took great pains
systematically to anange for whatever he was going to need in order to
cany out his plans."
"Hitler was distinguished," Maser added, "by an exceptional intelli-
gence in technical matters."
Hitler had acquired his technical knowledge by devoting many thou-
sands of hours of study to it from the time of his youtll.
WHERE TO FIND THE BILLIONS I 131
"Hitler read an endless nun1ber of books," explained Dr. Hjalmar

Schacht. "He acquired a very considerable runount of knowledge ru1d
made 1nasterful use of it in discussions ru1d speeches. In certain respects
he was a 1nan endowed with genius. He had ideas that no one else would
ever have thought of, ideas that resulted in tl1e ending of great difficulties,
sometimes by 1neasures of ru1 astonishing silnplicity or brutality."
Tilis was confmned by the fonner minister, Albert Speer, before the
Nuremberg 'llibunal:
"Hitler's dictatorahip was the first to make flawless use of all technical
means in order to exercise donlination over the people."
It was still ilnperative to find many billions of marks if they were to get
started on the great socioecono1nic revolution tl1at was destined, as Hitler
had always intended, to make Gennany once again the leader in Europe
in industry and commerce and, especially, to wipe out unemployment in
Gennany completely in the immediate future.
But where were they to pick up the indispensable billions?
Where and how were they to allot the money in order to ensure one
hwulred percent effectiveness for the investlnent?
Hitler was by no means a dictator in 1nattera of the economy, but a
stimulator. His government would do only that which private initiative
would not be able to do.
He believed in the dynrunism of the individual imagination, in the
creative spirit, in the need for every superior being to assun1e respon-
sibilities.
He also ad1nitted that profit was the great motivator. Without the
prospect of seeing his efforts rewarded, the dynrunic mall simply re-
frained from running risks. The econo1nic failure of Co1nmunism estab-
lished that In the absence of personal incentives, Soviet industry always
lagged behind all its competitora by twenty or tllirty yeara, so driven to
grappling on all sides with plans and projects and ideas that Russian
brains, never rewarded, no longer wore then1Selves out witl1 creating any
more than rnanufacturera did with developing.
Even the elite worker becrune discouraged in tl1e USSR, treated as he
was like a dehu1nanized robot and afforded no possibility of bettering
himself financially, no matter what discoveries 1night spring fron1 his in-
ventive nlind. The monopoly of tJ1e state n1eans tl1e death of all initiative
and hence of all progress.
For all men generously to pool all their profits would be 1narvelous.
But that is not the way of tl1e ,vorld. Every man desires that his labor
shall in1prove his own personal condition and that his brain, his creative
inu1gination and his persistence in research may all collect tlleh' reward.
For not having taken tl1at psychological evidence into account, Com-
nu1nism in the US.SR, right up to tl1e final days of 1990, has always wal-
lowed in ntediocrity, not\\1itllStanding tllat its ilnmense resexvoir of
nuutpo\\•er, its ahnost in.finite n1aterial possibilities and the bounteous
range of its ra,v 1naterials ought to have e1lSured it a natural supremacy.
Hitler ,vas always averse to tl1e idea of Jabor under state control. He be-
lieved in elites.
"'A single idea of genius," he used to say, "has n1ore value titan a life-
tilne of conscientious labor in an office."
There is an industrial elite just as tl1ere are political or intellectual
elites. A n,anufacturer of great ability should not be restrained, hunted
do\\'n by d1e revenue selVices like a criminal, nor should he remain un-
appreciated. On the contrary, it is important for tlle economic develop-
n1ent of a country that he be encouraged morally and materially with the
greatest pc:>smble zeal.
The most fruitful initiatives Hitler would take from 1933 on would be
in favor of private industries. He would keep an eye on tlle quality of their
directors, to be sure, and would shunt aside tlle incompetents, quite a
few of them at times, but he would give support to tlle best ones, those
with the keenest minds, tlte most imaginative, the boldest ones, even if
their political opinions did not agree witlt his own.
"There is no question," he stated very fumly, "of dismissing a factory
o"'ner or director under tlte pretext that he is not a National Socialist."
Hitler would exercise the same moderation, tlle same pragmatism, in
the administrative as well as in the industrial sphere.
\\7hat he demanded of his coworkers first of all was competence, ef-
fectiveness. The great majority of tlte functionaries of the Third Reich-
80 percent of them-were never enrolled in the National Socialist Party.
Several of Hitler's ministers, like Baron Constantin von Neurath and Jo-
hann wdwig von Krosigk, and important diplomatic emissaries of the
Reich to Prague, Vienna and Ankara were never Nazis in the least. But
they were capable.
Hitler kept an eye on someone like Franz von Papen, who was both
intelligent and clever, but he made use of him and even knew how to pay
homage to him.
WHERE TO FfND THE BILLIONS I 133
Shnilarly he did not hesitate to keep men heading up the chancellor's

office who were very competent workers chosen by his predecessors,
men such as Secretary of State Hans Otto Meissner, who had served all
the preceding chancellors, whether socialist or conseivative, and who
had done everything in his power right up to the last minute to torpedo
tJ1e Fuehrer's accession to power.
Me~ner lmew his business. Hitler wisely had him resume his place
as if he had been an associate from the old heroic days. Stiff and fonnal
in manner and faithfully sticking to his master, for twelve years he would
be an efficient majordomo who would remove all the thorns from the
stems of the roses before Hitler brought them up to his nose.
The most remarkable case of such a utili'.l3tion of talent was that of Dr.
fijalmar Schacht, the most discerning and most competent of the finan-
ciers of the Reich in 1933.
A supporter of Hitler? By no means! He never was and never had been
a supporter of anyone but Schacht. But technically he was the best in the
business. For getting the economic recovery of the Reich under way he
had no equal.
Ten years earlier, at the end of 1923, Schacht had saved the Weimar Re-
public financially by inventing the "RentenmarkII He was crafcy and imag-
inative and therefore capable of understanding the boldest of Hitler's
plans and of helping him carry them out
His.personal ambition was immense-another reason for Hitler to
give him every possibility to rise as high as he would. Hitler was going to
make him straightaway his president of the Reichsbank, then his com-
missioner for economic affairs with the rank of Cabinet minister. A mem-
ber of the Cabinet! He was entirely happy.
Was it dangerous? Of course! Doubly so inasmuch as Schacht was
a capitalist to the core, with close ties to high foreign banking interests,
most especially with Jewish financiers of London and New York, and
knew nothing of the revolutionary doctrines of someone like Hitler,
who favored the social preeminence of labor, the true creator of the na-
tion's life.
Schacht was never permitted to intervene in political matters. Hitler
would ask him to devise some new methods for coming up with the nec-
essary marks for what he intended to do. That was a lot, but it was all. His
collaboration would never go any further. It would cease when the finan-
cial formulas of the clever Dr. Schacht had served their time.
134 I Hm.ER OEMOGUAT
Schacht. would nurse a seething, bitter hatred at his dis1nia&u. But for
five years, Hitler, watching him closely the while, made full use of hhn.
Bent on getting billions of marks as quickly as p~ible aud any way
he could, Hitler sununoncd the president of U1e Reichsbank, Doctor
(Hlffi] Luth('.r, to his office early in fc"'ebnuuy of 1933. Doctor Lutl1er, ap-
pointed to his post by the fonner adnlinistn1tion, was a n1ru1 enrunored of
old-fashioned ideas of e~1reme pnldence in the mru1age1nent of U1e state's
money. He w~ all tl1e n1ore reserved because the state coffers were all
but. e1npty. His detacl1able collar, stiffas a calling card, spoke for U1e rigid-
ity of his principles. He belonged to tl1e old school of accountants who
spend four S0\1.5 only when tl1ey have four sous.
Hitler was quite well aware that tllis worthy mru1 was tu1happily pre-
siding over a bank lacking in funds. However, it was not to have hiin
en1pty the state treasury tlmt he had sununoned Lutl1er, but to have him
co1ue up witll some new 1neans of creating a war chest that would allow
tlle Gernum econonlY to get back on its feet ru1d tl1e une1nployinent to
vanish.
It.~ a question of in1agination. But Luther's brain was not a volcano
of new ideas; it was an abacus.
'"How much money," Hitler asked him, "can you put at 1ny disposal for
creatingjooo?"
Luther did not answer inunediately. He had started his abacus gomg.
\\7hen he had mentally completed the arithmetic operation, he gave his
response as though he were speaking to tl1e director of a financial con-
sortiunt
"One hundred and fifty nilllion."
It was an eloquent figure. It indicated just how completely Hitler's
predecessors and their colleagues were lacking in any idea of how to save
the Reich or of the financial means the operation would require. One hun-
dred and fifty million, when the German government poured a billion
marks into a bottomle$ pit every three n1onths in unemployment benefits
alone!
\llitll only 150 million marks they would have been hard put to grant
even three or four marks a day to five or six or seven ntillion of tl1e un-
employed for one short week. And they did not even know the exact nwn-
ber of tlle unenaployed since there were so many who drew no benefit at
all.
But all that meant was that the worthy man had never been asked tl1e
WHERE TO FIND THE BILLIONS I 135
question before. And that no leader of the Reich before Hitler had ever
concented hilnself witll finding out how to raise the funds tl,at would be
indispensably required to carry out any real plan for putting Germany
back to work.
Doctor Luther, accordingly, would be a totally ineffective financier if
Hitler wished to push on witll his project
Then he thought of Schacht, the old brown fox. He always had his hat
full of rabbits. Hitler was going to have him take them out.
"Herr Schacht," he said, "we are assuredly in agreement on one point:
no other single task facing the government at tl,e moment can be so truly
urgent as conquering unemployment That will take a lot of money. Do
you see any possibility of finding it apart from the Reichsbank?"
After a 1noment he added: "How much would it take? Do you have
any idea?"
Wishing to win Schacht over by appealing to his ambition, Hitler
smiled and asked:
"Would you be willing to take over direction of the Reichsbank again?"
Schacht silnpered an answer to the effect that he had a tender heart
and did not wish to hurt tl1e feelings of the incumbent Dr. Luther. Hitler,
playing the game, reassured him: he would find a new job for Dr. Luther
somewhere else.
Schacht pricked up his ears, straightened himself up in his detachable
collar, and trained his big round eyes on Hitler.
"Well, if that's the way it is, then I am ready to assume the presidency
of the Reichsbank again."
There it was. His great dream was realized! Schacht had been pres-
ident of the Reichsbank before, in 1924; he had been sacked, and now
he would go back in triu1nph. He felt vindicated. And the solution to the
problem was going to burst forth fro1n his inventive brain that same
month.
"It was nee~," Schacht later explained, "to discover a method that
would avoid inflating the investlnent holdings of tl,e Reichsbank immod-
erately and consequently increasing the circulation of money excessively.
"Therefore," he added, "I had to find some means of getting the sums
that were lying idle in pockets and banks, without meaning for it to be
long tenn and without having it undergo the risk of depreciation. That
was the reasoning behind the Mefo Bonds." (Schacht, ibid., pp. 69f.)
What did "Mefo" signify? Mefo was a contraction of the name Met,aJJ,-
forschungs A.G. (Metals Research Co.).

These metals were all the more special as the company that was going
to start the billions moving was a very small one: capital of only a million
n1arks.
But Hitler had managed to have it funded-and covered-by the four
largest trusts in Germany: Krupp, Siemens, Rheinstahl and GutehoffnWlg-
shutte.
Moreover, the Reich stood surety for all future commitments, and the
financial cover was thus complete.
Enterprises, old or new, that started to work to fill orders placed by the
government had only to draw drafts on Mefo for the amounts due. These
drafts, when presented at the wickets of the Reichsbank, could be con-
verted into cash immediately if so desired. But the success of the opera-
tion depended entirely on public acceptance of the Mefo bonds. The wily
Schacht had foreseen the whole thing. Since Mefo bonds were short-tenn
bonds which could be cashed in at any time, the risk in buying or accept-
ing them-or in holding them-was nil. They bore an interest of 4 per-
cent-a quite acceptable figure in those days-whereas bank notes
hidden under the mattress of course earned absolutely nothing. The pub-
lic added it all up and went for it in a big way.
While the Reichsbank had been able to draw on its treasury for only
a miserable 150 million marks in support of Hitler's war on unemploy-
ment, 12 billion marks worth of Mefo bonds were subscribed for by the
German public in four years!
That enormous reseive fund would make everything p~ible.
Those billions, the golden fruit of the combined imagination, ingenuity
and astuteness of Hitler and Schacht, would do away with the shilly-shal-
lying of the torpid and fundamentally fearful conservatism of the bankers.
Right at the start, Schacht was able to place a credit of a billion marks
at the disposal of the Reich.
A little later he added another credit of 600 million in order to pennit
a start to be made on Hitler's grand plans for highway construction. That
would provide work for 100,000 of the unemployed immediately and
thereafter, directly and indirectly, would mean the assurance of wages
for some 500,000 persons.
It was an enormous outlay but one immediately offset by the elimina-
tion of unemployment benefits and by the additional taxes received as a
result of the increase in living standard-Le., spending-of the newly em-
WHERE TO FIND TIIE 011,LIONS I 137
ployed. In a few 1nontl1s, thanks to tl1e Mefo bonds, which gave support
to the private economy once again and prodded it increasingly to assume
risks and expand, ree1nployment in Gennany would take on gigantic pro-
po1tions.
And what part did Schacht personally play in this extraordinary turn-
around in tl1e situation?
Schacht gave his own answer when he was vehemently reproached at
the Nuremberg trials for having made the revival of the Reich possible by
his financial initiatives.
"I don't think Hitler was reduced to begging my help. If I had not
seived him, he would have found other methods, other means. He was
not a man to give up. It's easy enough for you to say, Mr. Prosecutor, that
I should have watched Hitler die and not lifted a finger. But the entire
working class would have died witl1 him!"
Even the Marxists were quick to recognize that Hitler was making a
success of something they had never had the energy to undertake.
The admission was made in June of 1934 by the Zei,tschriftfii,r Sozial-
ismus, the newspaper of the Gennan Social-Democrats who were paying
for their incapacity in exile:
Faced with the despair of proletarians reduced to joblessness,

of young people with diplomas and a future closed to them, of
the middle classes of merchants and artisans condemned to
bankruptcy and of fanners terribly threatened by the collapse in
agricultural prices, we all failed. We weren't capable of offering
the 1nasses anything but speeches about the glocy of socialism.
Hitler, without waiting even a day, had undertaken to transfonn his

speeches into deeds.
And now that billions of 1narks were within his reach, thanks to his
persistence and imagination, how was Hitler going to carry his econontic
and social recovecy progra1ns through to success in the middle of the
crash just a few monU1s ahead?
Hitler unveils the Volkswagen, or "people's car,• which he had designed in 1932. One
of Hitler's focuses in office was the improvement of the lite of the German worker, and
the development of a car that average Germans could afford was an important aspect
of that program. In this, Hitler had been inspired by American Henry Ford, whose
Ford Motor Company had been created with a similar mission. NEWs cOM
CHAPTER
HITlER'S SOCIAl REVOlUTION
itler's tremendous social achievement in putting Gennany's

6 million unemployed back to work is never spoken of any
longer. In fact, since 1945, not a single serious study has
been devoted to that nonetheless highly interesting phe-
nomenon. The reincorporation of six million unemployed
back into the economic system of a country is more than a current event
Yet the "democratic" historians dispose of that unparalleled achievement
in just a few lines.
Similarly, practically no reference is made to the whole body of re-
forms that totally changed the condition of the working man in Gennany:
the transformation of factories that were previously gloomy caverns into
spacious and healthy work centers, with natural lighting, surrounding
gardens and playing fields; the building of hundreds of thousands of
houses for workers; the several weeks of paid leave, as well as leisure
time and vacation trips by land and sea; Volkwagens at a cost of less than
a mark per day; physical and cultural education for young workers, also
technical training; and the most modem and complete social security/
pension system in all of Europe at the time.
That subject is one that is hushed up as quickly as possible, because
it is embarrassing. The reader might be able to say to himself.-who
knows?-that Hitler was perhaps the greatest social achiever of the 20th
century, an intolerable view to begin with!
However, it is a very important and in fact essential part of the work
140 I HITI.Elt DEMOCRAT
of Adolf Hitler. But since reali1.ation of tl1ose tl1ings 1night n1ake us actu-
ally want to take our hats off to hitn, we are wruy, we skip it; we re1nain
silent and play dead.
In general, when it co1nes to Hitler, histolirulS all act like Mrulichaeans,
seeing things as straight black or white, clotl1ed in hypoctisy and eyes
trained sole]y in the direction n1ost pleasing to t11eir readers, who have al-
ready long since gone astray.
However, giving back work and bread to nlillions of une1nployed who
had been dragging out tl1eir lives in nlisery for years; allnost totally re-
structuring indllSUial life ru1d creating an entirely new setup for labor vir-
tually out of tllin air; conceiving and acllievit1g a nationwide organization
for tbe defense and bettennent of seventeen nlillion wage earners (twenty
nlillion in a few years); creating ex catliedra a new 1nagistrature charged
with guaranteeing tJ1e rights of, and calling attention to the duties of, all
1ne1nbers of tile social comn1u1lity: tJ1at orgaalic body of refonns repre-
sented tl1e execution of a gigaa1tic plan.
It had been conceived aa1d prepared by Hitler well in advance. With-
out it the country would have collapsed into anarchy. And it was all-inclu-
sive: from tile industrial recovery to the construction of an inn alongside
an autobalu1.
It took tJ1e French Revolution several years to set up a stable social
structure. 'TI1e Soviets, still longer. Five years after tile Conununist revo-
lution of 1917, hundreds of thousands of RussiailS were still dying of mis-
ery and hw1ger. In Gennany, in just a few montl1S, the great 1nachinery
v.ras in n1otion, witil organization and realization coining together irmne-
diately.
The single fact of undertaking tile construction of a higl1way system
aln1ost witl1out equal in tile world migl1t by itself have kept a govenunent
occupied for years. It was necessary to have studied the proble1n before-
hand and, witil due regard for tile needs of the population and tl1e econ-
01ny, to set the dimensions of tile higl1way systen1 destined to give
GemW1y a new lease on life.
Hitler, as always, had been very farsigl1ted. The widtl1 of tl1e concrete
lanes would be 24 n1eters. There would be hundreds of bridges of large
span. In order to harmonize the modem work with tJ1e natural site, a great
deal of natural rock would be used.
The artistically drawn cuived lines caane togetl1er and separated as
tilough tlley were living constructions. They were marked out with gas
HITLER'S SOCIAL REVOLUTION I 141
stations and inns, all built in confonnity with local styles.

The original plan had called for 7,000 kilo1neters of roadway. It would
later be increased to 10,000, then to 11,000 kilometers when Austria was
reunited witl1 Gennany.
The Second World War would shatter tl1is great modernization effort
of tl1e Reich, but what was created remains as a deathless testimony to a
man and an era.
The financial boldness equaled the technical boldness. Those express-
ways would ultitnately be free of charge. That see1ned an anomaly to the
cashiers, but the return quickly proved to be considerable, given the sav-
ings in tin1e and 1naterial and the marked increase in travel-hence also
tJ1e expenditures of those using the roads-which is to say an increase as
well in receipts from taxes, notably on gasoline.
Germany thus bestowed upon herself a unique means to economic
prosperity. Enormously increased transport facilities. The development
of hundreds of new industries along these ribbons of road. Elimination of
congestion on secondary roads. Travel and intercommWlication by hun-
dreds of thousands of tourists, or of producers and customers, in search
of new econo1nic possibilities.
Even tl1e expenditures in labor costs brought some very interesting
compensations: tl1ey eliminated unemployment benefits (25 percent of
the total amount of wages). The 100,000 and later 150,000 workers de-
ployed along tl1e expressways under construction had the additional 75
percent, which they spent, and those expenditures in tum meant in-
creased tax revenues for the government.
Can you hnagine the problems, even before tile first breaking of
ground, posed by the mobilization of those hundreds of thousands of
workers: through often uninhabited regions, in marshy areas, in the
shadow of Alpine peaks?
For 150,000 men to leave their hon1es and go camping in rough terrain
was hard enough. But it was also necessary at the outset to ensure toler-
able living conditions for the colu1nns of workers who accepted such an
uprooting for the sake of gaining a livelihood.
In France it is untllinkable for an unemployed person to move twenty
kilometers for the sake of finding a new job. He wants to stay glued to his
native village, his garden, the cafe on the comer.
The Germans are fundrunentally hard-working people. In 1933, they
were tired of being useless. Pouring concrete, using a pick, or whatever,
they would put dignity back in tl1eir lives.

No one balked at tl,e inconvenience, tl1e absence fro1n ho1ne or trav-
eling a long way. TI,e will to live tl1e life of an effective n1ru1 again out-
weighed all secondary considerations.
Still, it was desired tl1at the worker keep up his spirits, that he not feel
isolated or tl1at he was being used as a n1ere tool.
The efforts 1nade to bring him 1naterial co1nforts, to provide enter-
tainn1ent and instn1ction, were inunediate and massive. The world had
never seen its like before in any great construction project whatsoever.
The workers felt that they were again being treated as human beings
witll bodies to be satisfied, hearts to be comforted, and brains to be
enlightened.
It had been nee~ to organize the transportation and housing of
these nlaSseS of workers methodically, to set up construction camps, sup-
ply bases, and recreation facilities for them, all while moving ahead in
step witll tlle roads-and to provide this transient population with whole-
son1e amusements, and cultural training as well. Fourteen mobile movie
crews traveled along with them from one construction site to the next.
And always and everywhere labor was honored and celebrated.
It was always like that in tlle Third Reich. The great popular demon-
strations, whetller by workers or by country people, were masterpieces
of both magnificence and good taste. No foreign spectator, however mul-
ish, could fail to appreciate that.
Hitler was quickly able to open the first section of the Autobahn, from
Frankfurt-am-Main to Dannstadt. He had taken with him on the occasion,
in his private car, the manufacturer of the billions, Doctor Schacht, who
was beaming like tlle July Sun and puffed up like a balloon.
The official procession moved ahead three cars abreast in the van,
tllen by six, transforming the Autobahn into a one-way road.
It was a far cry from the donkey roads of the none-too-<listant past,
when we considered ourselves well-to-do to be riding a bicycle.
The plan to build thousands of low-cost homes had also called for a
vast mobilization of manpower.
Hitler had envisioned housing that would be beautiful, cozy and on a
1
grand scale. He didn t intend to house the Gennan people as his predeces-
sors had, in rabbit warrens. Those great barracks filled with human be-
ings on the outskirts of labor t.owns filled him with horror. Most of the
houses he designed were single-story detached dwellings, with a small
l·IITLEH'S SOCIAL REVOLUTION I 143
garden where the kids could ro1np, the wife could gather a few salad
greens, and the 1nan could read his newspaper in peace after his day's
work. These single-frunily ho1nes were also built in the architectural style
of tbe various regions, all so different and channing in Gennany.
When tl1ere was no alten1ative to creating large complexes, Hitler saw
to it that they were always airy and made more beautiful with large gar-
den areas where tl1e children could play witl1out being in any danger.
All housing was equipped to obsetve high standards of hygiene, some-
tiling almost always lacking in earlier working-class lodgings.
Loans runortfaable in ten years were granted to newly manied couples
who wished to settle pennanently in their homes. At the birth of each
child, a fourth of the debt was canceled. Four children at the nonnal rate
of a new arrival every two years and a half, and tl1e family had no more
payments to make.
I expressed my astonishment at this t.o Hitler one day.
"But then, you never get back the tot.al amount of your loans?"
"How so?" he replied, s1niling. "Over a period of ten years, a family
with four children brings in much more than our loans in the taxes levied
on a hundred different items of consumption."
Every year tax revenues increased proportionately witl1 the increase
in tl1e cost of Hitler1s soci.al programs. Tax returns quite naturally tripled
in a few years.
There was never a financial crisis in Hitler's Gennany.
In order to stimulate the economy, it was necessary to have the netve,
as Hitler had, to invest money tl1at the government did not really have,
ratl1er than wait witl1 folded arms and an empty head for tl1e economy to
revive by itself before a11y investments were made.
Our whole era is dying economically because of our yielding to fearful
hesitation. Enrichment follows investment, not the otl1er way around.
Since Hitler, it is only so1neone like Ronald Reagan who has seemed
to understand tllis. When he became president, he understood how to get
the United States prospering again by boldly stimulating the economy
witl1 loans and a drastic reduction in taxes, not waiting for it to come out
of its stagnation on its own.
Abrain inspired is worth a tllousand t.ons of gold. And the gold will fol-
low when the brain takes the lead.
Before tlle end of 1933 even, Hitler had succeeded in building 202,119
model housing units. In four years he would provide the Gennan people
144 I HITLER DEMOCUAT
with 1,458,128 new dwellings, ahnost a 1nillion and a haU1

Workers would no longer be exploited as in the days of the constn.1c-
tion pirates. Amonth's rent for a worker could not exceed 261narks, tl,at
is to sa..v, about an eighth of nonnal wages in tl1ose tilues. Or 45 marks
ma.ximun, for an employee witl1 a 1nore substantial salruy.
Equallv effective social 1neasures ,vere ta.ken on behalf of the fanners
who had the lowest inco1nes. h, 1933 alone 17,611 new farm houses were
completed, each of tl1em surrounded by a parcel of land 1,000 meters
square. In tluee years Hitler would build 91,000 such fannhouses. The
rental for such a dwelling could in no case exceed a modest share of the
Canner's income.
That allotlnent of land and housing, available to all, would be but one
stage of the revolution tllat in the very near future was going to transform
the life of tl,e Reich's rural population.
These vecy considerable undertakings, which rapidly restored bread
and pride to hundreds of thousands of workers, had triggered a general
con,petition, and anotller 100,000 workers had found employment in re-
pairing the secondacy roads. As many others again had been hired to
work on canals, dams, drainage and irrigation projects, thereby making
fertile again some of tlle most barren regions of tlle Reich.
Industries everywhere were hiring again. Some of them, like Krupp
and I.G. Farben, or the big automobile manufacturers, on a very large
scale. \Vith tlle country becoming more prosperous, car sales had shown
an increase of more tllan 80,000 units in 1933. At the same time employ-
ment in the auto industry had doubled All Gennany was getting into full
production, with private industry leading tlle way.
The new government was giving them every assistance because they
were the creators of employment Hitler had almost immediately made
available to tllem a reseive fund of 500 million marks-the invented
marks-while seeing to it that incompetent and indecisive persons in ad-
ministrative posts were eliminated witllout any ifs, ands or buts.
The start-up assistance given to the best of tllem would in no way be
lost And supplementing this preliminacy support, another two billion
marks would be loaned to the most entelJ)rising factory owners. Nearly
halfoftllese billions would go into new wages and salaries, thus removing
tlle burden from the state of three hundred million marks in unemploy-
ment benefits. Add to that the hundreds of millions in taxes deriving from
tlle business recovecy and from the enonnous amount of restored wages,
HITLER'S SOCIAL REVOLUTION 145
as well as from the widespread manufacture of new products, and the

state had back its investment and then some.
Hitler's entire economic policy would be based on those calculations.
Risk very large amounts to undertake great public works and t.o spur the
renewal and modernization of industry, then later recover the billions in-
vested through invisible and painle~ tax revenues.
Hitler invented that recovery fonnula, and in a very short time Ger-
many commenced t.o see the results of it
These very important economic reforms were not, however, Hitler's
only objective.
All the time he was organizing the reemployment of Germany's work-
ers, it was his intention that the workers themselves should in future be
powerfully enough organized to resist the pre~ures of a capitalism that
was often insatiable and that up to that point in time had given little
thought to the existence of the community.
He would impose his own conception of the social community on all
of them: that the most powerful~ and the lowliest worker were com-
ponents together of an in~oluble reality. Only their collaboration in
loyalty and justice could ensure the prosperity of the different elements
of the society.
Marxism, by setting them against each other, had failed and had
brought Gennany's economy t.o the point of collapse. The workers had
come to understand that and had deserted their demagogic unions en
masse, recognizing them as promoters of constant conflicts which in ru-
ining the factories ruined the workers as well.
Besides, by the end of 1932 the discredited unions were drowning in
debt: three billion marks, at an interest of 10 percent, which they would
never be able to pay. Despite that, some of the Marxist leaders, sensing
that shipwreck was about to sink their foundering ve~el, had engaged in
sensational malversations: 600,000 marks had been embezzled in recent
months.
The Marxist leaders had failed: socially, financially and morally.
Every activity requires someone in charge. The natural head of a fac-
tory is the man responsible for it. He is the one who has to be the moti-
vator of common activity, but only on the condition that he is both a
capable director and concerned about social justice. An industrialist in
the new Gennany who was not would forfeit his leadership role. There
were many such dismissals under Hitler.
A considerable nun,ber of guarantees protected tl,e worker against

any abuse of authority. Their specific pu11>0Se was to see that the tights
of workers were res1)(...~ted and tl1at workers ,vere treated as wo1thy col-
laborators, not just as factory tools. Every industrialist was obliged, with
the collaboration of ,vorker delegates, to draft unifonn and hupersonal
shop regulations tllat were not hnposed fro1n above but adapted to each
factory and its particular ,vorking conditions. The regulations had to in-
dicate "tl1e length of tl,e ,vorking day, the tin,e and 1nethod of paying
wages, and the safety ntles, and to be posted tlu-oughout tl,e factory,"
readily available both to tl1e worker whose interests ntight be endangered
and to U1e owner or n1anager whose orders 1night be subverted.
The thousands of different versions of such regulations seived to cre-
ate a healtlzy rivalry, with eve1y factory group wanting to outdo the otl1ers
in justice and efficiency.
One of tl,e first refonns to benefit Gennan workers was the est.ablish-
n1ent of paid vacations.
The French Popular Front, in 1936, would make a show of having in-
vented paid vacations-and stingily at that, only one week per year; but
Hitler had established them, and two or three tiines as generously, from
tlle first 1nontll of his conung to power in 1933.
Every facto:ry en,ployee fron1 then on would have the legal right to a
paid vacation.
Until tl1en in Gennany, paid vacations did not exceed four or five days,
and nearly half of tlle younger workers had no vacation time at all. Hitler
on the otl1er hand favored the younger workers; vacations were not
handed out blindly, and the youngest workers were granted them more
generously. It was a humane action: a young person has more need of
rest and fresh air for tlle development of his strength and vigor just com-
ing into 1naturity. So tlley had the benefit of 18 days per year of paid va-
cation.
These figures, to be sure, have perhaps now been surpassed, a half
centwy after Hitler, but in tl1eir day, in 1933, they far exceeded the Euro-
pean nonns.
Basic vacation time was twelve days. Then, from the age of 25 on, it
went up to 18 days. After 10 years with the company, workers got a still
longer vacation: 21 days, three tiines what the French socialists would
grant tlle workers of their count:ry in 1936.
As for overtime hours, tlley no longer were paid, as they were every-
where else in Europe at that time, atjust tl1e regular hourly rate. The work
day itself had been reduced to a tolerable nonn of a little less than eight
hours, thus tl1e 40-hour week in Europe was created by Adolf Hitler. And
beyond that legal limit, each additional hour had to be paid at a consid-
erably increased rate.
As another innovation, work breaks were made longer: two hours
every day in order to allow workers to relax and to make use of the play-
ing fields that the large industries were required to provide.
Disnlissal of an employee was no longer left as before to the sole dis-
cretion of tl1e employer.
In that era, workers' rights to job security was nonexistent.
Hitler saw to it that those rights were strictly spelled out. The em-
ployer had to announce any dismissal four weeks in advance. The em-
ployee then had a period of up to two months in which to lodge a protest.
The dismissal could also be annulled by the "Honor of Work Tribunal."
What was tl1e "Honor of Work Tribunal"? It was one of three great el-
ements of protection and defense that were going to be of benefit to every
Gennan worker. The first was the Council of Trust. The second was the
Labor Com.mission. The third, the Tribunal of Social Honor.
The Council of Trust was charged with attending to the establishment
and the development of a real community spirit between management
and labor.
"In any business enterprise," the law stated, "the employer and head
of the enterprise [fuehrer], the e1nployees and workers, personnel of the
enterprise, shall work jointly towards the goal of the enterprise and the
common good of the nation."
Neitl1er would any longer be the victim of the other-not the worker
facing the arbitrariness of the employer, nor the employer facing the
blackmail of strikes for political purposes.
Article 35 of tl1e law stated: "Every member of an enterprise commu-
nity shall asswne the responsibility required by his position in said com-
mon enterprise."
In short, at the head of the enterprise there would be a living, breath-
ing executive in charge, but not a moneybags with unconditional power.
"The interest of the conununity may require that an incapable or un-
worthy employer may be relieved of his duties."
The employer would no longer be inaccessible and all-powerful, au-
tlloritatively detennining the conditions of hiring and firing of his staff.
He, too, would be subject to tlte workshop regulations, which he would

have to respect, exactly as the least of his e1nployees. The law conferred
honor and the responsibility of autl1oricy on tl1e e1uployer only insofar as
he merited it
Every business enterprise of 20 or 1nore persons was to have its
"Council of'Irust" '111e "vo to 101ne1nbers of this council would be cho-
sen from aiuong tl1e staff by tl1e head of the enterprise.
The ordinance of application of March 10, 1934 of tl1e above law fur-
ther stated:
"The staff shall be called upon to decide for or against tl1e established
list in a secret vote, and all salaried employees, including apprentices of
21 years ofage or older, will take part in tile vote. Voting is done by putting
a nun1ber before tl1e names of the candidates in order of preference, or
by striking out certain names."
In contrast to the business councils of the preceding regime, the Coun-
cil of 'Irust was no longer an instrument of class, but one of teamwork of
t h e ~ composed of delegates of the staff as well as of the head of
the enterprise.
The one could no longer act witilout tile other. Compelled to coordi-
nate their interests, tilough fonnerly rivals, tiley would now cooperate to
establish by mutual consent the regulations which were to determine
worldng conditions.
"The Council has the duty to develop mutual trust within the enter-
prise. It will advise on all measures serving to improve the carrying out
of the work of tile enterprise and on standards relating to general work
conditions, in particular tilose which concern measures tending to rein-
force feelings of solidarity between the members themselves and be-
tween the members and the enterprise, or tending to improve the
personal situation of tile members of the enterprise community. The
Council also has the obligation to intervene to settle disputes. It must be
heard before the imposition of fines based on workshop regulations."
(Marcel Laloire, op. cit., p. 48.)
Before assuming their duties, members of the Work Council had to
take an oath before all their coworkers to "carry out tileir duties only for
the good of tile enterprise and of all citizens, setting aside any personal
interest, and in their behavior and manner of living to seive as model rep-
resentatives of the enterprise." (Art.10, paragraph 1 of the law.)
Every 30th of April, on the eve of the great national labor holiday,
HlTLEll'S SOCIAL llEVOLUTION 149
council duties ceased and the councils were renewed, pruning out con-
servatis1n or petrifaction and cutting short the arrogance of dignitaries
who ntight have thought themselves beyond criticism.
It was up to the enterprise itself to pay a salary to members of the
Council of Trust, just as if they were employed in the work area, and to
"assun1e all costs resulting from the regular fulfillment of the duties of
the Council."
TI1e second agency that would ensure the orderly development of tJ1e
new German social system was the institution of the "Work Commis-
sioners."
TI1ey would essentially be conciliators and arbitrators. When gears
were grinding, they were the ones who would have to apply the grease.
TI1ey would see to it that the Councils of Trust were functioning hanno-
niously to ensure that regulations of a given business enterprise were
being carried out to the letter.
They were divided among 13 large districts covering tlle tenitory of
the Reich.
As arbitrators they were not dependent upon eitl1er owners or work-
ers. They had total independence in the field. TI1ey were appointed by
the state, which represented both the interests of everyone in the enter-
prise and the interests of the society at large.
In order that their decisions should never be unfounded or arbitrary,
they had t;o rely on the advice of a "Consulting Council of Experts" con-
sisting of 18 me1nbers selected from various sections of the economy in
a representation of sorts of the interests of each territorial district.
1b ensure still further the objectivity of their arbitration decisions, a
third agency was superimposed on the Councils of Trust and the 13 Com-
missioners: tlle Tribunals of Social Honor.
Thus, from 1933 on, the Gennan worker had a system of justice at
his disposal that was created especially for him and which would "ad-
judicate all grave infractions of the social duties based on the enterprise
community."
Examples of these "violations of social honor" are cases where the
employer, abusing his power, displayed ill will toward his staff or im-
pugned the honor of his subordinates; cases where staff members
threatened work harmony by spiteful agitation; the publication by
members of the Council of confidential information regarding the en-
terprise which they became cognizant of in the course of discharging
tJ,eir duUes. (Marcel Laloire, op. cit. p. 62.)

TI,irteen "'lnbunes of Social Honor" were established, corresponding
to u,e 13 Conm,issions.
TI1e presidingjudge was not a fanatic; he was a career judge who rose
above disputes.
Meanwhile tl1e enterprise involved was not left out of the proceedings:
Ute judge was seconded by two assistant judges, one representing the
manage1nent, the other a 1ne1nber of tl1e Council of Trust.
11\is tribunal, the smne as aI\Y other court of law, had tlle means of
enforcing its decisions. But there were nuances. Decisions could be llin-
ited in nlild cases to a ren,onstrance. They could also hit the guilty party
witl1 fu,es of up to 10,000 n1arks.
Otller very special sanctions were provided for tl1at were precisely
adapted to tl1e social circunlStances: change of employment, dismissal
of the head of tile enterprise or llis agent who had failed in his duty. In
case of a contested decision, tl1e legal dispute could always be taken up
to a Supren,e Court seated in Berlin-a fourth level of protection.
Fron1 tl,en on tl1e worker knew that "exploitation of his physical
strength in bad faitll or offending his honor" would no longer be allowed.
He had to fu1fill certain obligations to the community, but they were ob-
ligations that applied to all members of the enterprise, from the chief ex-
ecutive to the messenger boy.
Gennany's workers at last had clearly established social rights that
were arbitrat.ed by a Labor Commission aild enforced by a Tribunal of
Honor.
Altl1ough effected in an atmosphere ofjustice aild moderation, it was
a revolution.
This was only the end of 1933, and already the first effects of it could
be felt.
The factories aild shops large aild small were reformed or trans-
fonned in confonnity with the strictest standards of cleanlines.5 and hy-
giene: the interior areas, so often dilapidated, opened to light; playing
fields constructed; rest areas made available where one could converse
at one's ease and relax during rest periods; employee cafeterias; proper
dressing rooms.
With time-that is t.o say, in three years-those achievements would
take on dimensions never before imagined: more thail 2,000 factories re-
fitted and beautified; 23,000 work premises modernized; 800 buildings de-
signed exclusively for 1neetings; 1,200 playing fields; 13,000 sanitary facil-
ities; 17,000 cafeterias.
Eight hundred departmental inspectors and 17,300 local inspectors
would foster and closely and continuously supervise those renovations
and installations.
TI1e large industrial establishments moreover had been given the ob-
ligation of preparing areas not only suitable for sports activities of all
ld.nds, but provided with swimming pools as well.
Gennany bad come a long way from the sinks for washing one's face
and the dead tired workers, old before their time, crammed into squalid
courtyards during work breaks.
In order to assure the natural development of the working class, phys-
ical education courses were instituted for the younger workers; 8,000
such were organized. Technical traming would be equally emphasized,
with the creation of hundreds of work schools, technical courses and ex-
aminations of professional competence, and competitive examinations
for the best workers in which large prizes were awarded.
1b rejuvenate young and old alike, Hitler had ordered that a gigantic
vacation organization for workers be set up. Hundreds of thousands of
workers would be able every summer to relax on land and sea Magnifi-
cent cruise ships would be built. Special trains would carry vacationers
to the mountains and to the seashore. The locomotives that hauled the in-
numerable worker-tourists in just a few years of travel in Gennany would
log a distance equivalent to fifty-four times around the world!
TI1e cost of these popular excursions was nearly insignificant, thanks
to greatly reduced rates authorized by the Reichsbank.
Did these refonns lack something? Were some of them flawed by er-
rors and blunders? It is possible. But what did a blunder amount to along-
side the immense gains? That perhaps the transfonnation of the working
class smacked of authoritarianism?
That's exactly right. But the people were sick and tired of anarchy. To
feel commanded didn't bother them a bit. In fact, people have always
liked having a strong man guide them.
One thing for certain is that the turn of mind of the working class,
which was still two-thirds non-Nazi in 1933, had completely changed.
The Belgian author Marcel Laloire would note: "When you make your
way through the cities of Gennany and go into the working-class districts,
go through the factories, the construction yards, you are astonished to
find so many workers on the job sporting tl1e Hitler insignia, to see so
n1any flags witll the swastika, black on a bright red background, in the
n1ost populous districts."
The "Labor Front" that Hitler had superilnposed on all of tl1e workers
and employers of the Reich was for tlte 1nost part received witl1 favor.
And already tl1e steel spades oftl1e sturdy young lads of tl1e "National
Labor Service" could be seen gleanling along the highways.
TI1e National Labor Service had been created by Hitler out of thin
air to bring togetl1er for a few 1nontl\S in absolute equality, and in tlte
sruue unifonu, botl1 tl1e so1\S of millionaires and tl1e sons of the poorest
fmnilies.
All had to perfonu tlte sruue work and were subject to the saine dis-
cipline, even tl1e srune pleasures and the srune physical and moral devel-
op1uent.
On the smne COI\Struction sites and in tl1e same living quarters, tl1ey
had become conscious of tl1eir conm1onality, had come to understand
one anotl1er, and had swept away tileir old prajudices of class and caste.
After tllis llitch in tile National Labor Service, tlley all began to live as
comrades, tl1e workers knowing tilat tl1e rich man's son was not a 1non-
ster, and the yoWlg lad from tile wealtllY family knowing tlla.t the worker's
son had honor just like anotl1er young fellow who had been 1nore gener-
ously favored by birth.
Social hatred was disappearing. A socially united people was being
bom
Hitler could already go into factories-something no man of the so-
called Right before him would have risked doing-and hold forth to tl1e
mob of workers-tens of tilousands of them at times, as in the Siemens
works.
"In contrast to the von Papens and other coW\tJ.y gentlemen," he might
tell them, "in my youth I was a worker like you. And in my heart of hearts,
I have remained what I was then."
In the course of his twelve years in power, no incident ever occurred
at any factory he visited. When Hitler was among the people, he was at
home, and he was received like the member of the family who had been
the most successful.
CHAPTER
CONQUEST BY CAPTIVATION
n order to triumph in politics, it isn't enough to be able to count on

the fanatic devotion of a few thousand booted and helmeted SA
who beat the Marxists to a pulp when they come looking for trou-
ble. Fear isn't enough in politics. Nor is force. Nor discipline. A mil-
itary man can order, shout, and everyone comes to attention. The
politician must charm, must captivate.
What did Hitler have to make him a charmer?
At first sight he was nothing to get excited about. He was poorly
dressed, wore a wretched blue jacket that ran as soon as he started to
perspire. He had only one shirt, worth about two cents, hideous brown
shoes, a gabardine raincoat that was always wrinkled, and a rather bat-
tered old gray hat
His aparbnent was a garret: carefully furbished, clean and neat, but
still a garret.
Hitler was personally always remarkably clean, his face almost too
shining. His pants, though very worn, were always carefully creased. He
was well liked by the little people of his neighborhood. Some
tradeswomen would bring him an egg. Others would sit down at table
with him at a modest coffeehouse. He was a simple man, and he woldd
always remain so.
But the others? The rich people? The complex intellectuals? That was
the big surprise. No sooner had Hitler held a few meetings than he be-
came the favorite of the most distinguished drawing rooms in Munich.
Was it because as hmnans go, he was a phenomenon? Because his

voice tlumdered in a boudoir as if he were haranguing a Munich audience
of 7,000 at the Krone Circus? Or because women of fashion liked to ex-
hibit originals at their salons? No, indeed!
\Ve nu1St get used to tllis idea: Hitler was received in what is called
high society not as a bn1te witl1out manners, or as a rather droll eccentric.
His success was tllat of a charmer.
He captivated the common people. But he was also going to captivate,
and on short acquaintance, the very different members of the social elite,
including the n1ost prominent-and often the most distinguished-soci-
ety women of his time.
Rubbing elbows with aristocrats didn't bother him at all if they be-
longed to the true elite who had risen because they possessed real qual-
ifications. In the same manner, he would later take great interest in
meeting powerful industrialists, for he appreciated men with imagination
and character, with a passion for doing something, men who conceived
something great and then achieved it
What he detested was leveling down, the false equality in the
mediocre. Equality does not exist No two horses are identical. No two
stars are identical. Nor two thumbs identical. Every worthy man should
have his chance, whatever his origin. If he has gone beyond the common-
place, the easy, the vulgar, he is worthy of respect. For Hitler, inequality
in worth was a law. In his view, being a great industrialist was as wortl1y
of respect as being a good mechanic. And vice versa
Hitler thus would not have dealings with the "well-to-do" class, with
their peevish complexes of the unsatisfied. The worst of faults in social
life is to be jealous of those who have managed to rise, instead of sin-
cerely congratulating them. Hitler was aware of the genius he had within
himself. But he approached without bitterness, even with curiosity, those
who at the moment had risen much higher than himself.
He was fascinating.
But was it simply a matter of a physical attraction, such as a crooner
may offer?
Not exactly. He was neither handsome nor ugly. Only his eyes of a
deep blue threw off Wlexpected sparks. His hands, too, were noteworthy;
they al.most flew when he spoke. Apart from th~ there was nothing spe-
cial. Average height, a rather heavy gait An ordinary must.ache.
Then, in what way was he pleasing?
CONQUEST BY CAPTIVATION 155
He was liked first of all for his engaging manner. He was very Vien-
nese. His mother had been a fine won1an. He had a charming way with
words, picturesque, sensitive. One of his great special talents: was to kiss
the hand while bowing low, then straightening up, to direct into the
woman's eyes an unexpected flashing regard from his own.
n,e Hitler of the violet blue eyes was only one of the many Hitlers.
Women scarcely ever knew any but the first one, all gentleness, even shy-
ness. With his friendly presence, a smile like the flowers of spring and in-
comparable eyes, he earned forgiveness in advance.
Only this personal charm explains why Hitler immediately, at first
meeting, was noticed, admired and often-more or less secretly-loved
by women of breeding, of superior intelligence and beautY, and of a social
class a thousand times superior at the time to his own.
Women of the most varied ldnd, moreover.
This man who was represented to be a narrow nationalist for whom,
to believe his detractors, anytlling that was not German was vermin or
dirt, would choose as his most important collaborators men who caine
from other countries or who had strong attaclunents abroad.
Rudolf Hes.5, his right hand, came fro1n Egypt and had a British edu-
cation. Himmler had a French great-grandfather, named Pas.saquay, from
the important village of de la Roche. Baldur von Schirach was half Alner-
ican. Only English was spoken in his hon1e. Goering had man·ied a
Swedish woman. Goebbels's wife had lived for four years in a Belgian
boardinghouse. Rosenberg was of Baltic origin. Darre was an Argentine.
Hitler was open to everytlling that was non-Gennan. He especially
wished to enrich the language of his country with words from other lan-
guages. Though passionately fond of German music, he did not hesitate
to have the football songs of Harvard Univeraity plagiarized for his SA! He
had a series of German marches which he thought too solemn adapted to
the Alnerican cadence. The "Fight, Fight, Fight" of Harvard becan1e "Sieg!
Sieg! Heil! Sieg hell!"
During the trials, Hitler marked ti1ne like a drmn major: "That's it,
that's it, that's marvelous!,. he exclaimed.
One could scarcely be les.5 bigoted about things foreign.
Foreign women, too, quickly swanned around Hitler. Elsa, the wife
of the editor, Bruckman, was a Hungarian, nee the Princes.5 Cantacuzene.
Helene Hanfstaengl was a statuesque New Yorker to whom Hitler vowed
a veritable adoration. Gertrude von Seidlitz was a very rich Finnish
landowner. Countess d'Alle1nont, who, after having known Hitler in

Berlin in 1921, predicted tllat he "would be Gennany's 1uessiah," was
French. The Atnerican Atnb~dor Williruu Dodd's daughter, Martha,
was mad about. tl,e F\tehrer. Witllout al\Y succ~, we 1nust add.
The very beautiful Unity Mitford, sister of Lord Redesdale, who for
love of Hitler put a bullet in her head on the first morning of the Second
\Vorld \Var, was British. Hitler honored her as though she had been a
Valkyrie.
Gem,an women, to be sure, were also n1ost appreciative of Hitler's
cham,, won,en such as the Princess Stephanie von Hohenlohe, or
Cositna, \Vagner's daughter-in-law, who would dedicate to him not just
adntlration, but worship.
Hitler renuuned circumspect with all of them. His prudence did not
prevent son,e tragedies. There were several suicides.
Hitler's pilot, Gen. Hans Bauer, upon his return from Soviet imprison-
n1ent recalled with hun1or tl,e ardor of Hitler's female admirers: "As a
statesn1m1 in tbe public eye, Hitler had said to him, "I must take precau-
ff
tions. Ifyou pemlit yourself a departure from accepted standards of con-

duct, no one is concerned aboutit Ifl were to do the same, I'd soon have
to hide. Won1en are incapable of holding their tongues. ff
Bauer added: "Naturally I spoke of Hitler to women and girls. They

were all enraptured, fanatical, hysterical. On that evening, the conversa-
tion with my neighbor turned exclusively upon 'Hitler.' She confessed to
being in love with Hitler and to being afraid that she would not find a hus-
band, because she compared all other men with Hitler, and none of them
pleased her. I couldn't keep from telling her what Hitler had said to me.
She stared at me, abashed: 'Is it true that he said that? Tell him that I
wouldn't breathe a word, that r d rather have my tongue tom out'!"
So, if he had not guarded against it, he could have seduced a dozen
women every week But he kept his weather eye open!
After 1945, some took delight in ex.plaining that if Hitler did not in-
dulge himself, it was because he was impotent A grotesque lie! Like a
thousand others! But the public is excessively fond of these scabrous and
spicy stories, these wonderful "revelations. After a quarter of a century,
ff
it has taken the intervention of historian Werner Masser to put an end to

this nonsense. He writes:
"The oft-peddled assertion that Hitler would have been incapable of
physically satisfying a woman, derives from sheer imagination. It seems
CONQUEST BY CAJYfIVATION I 157
beyond doubt tl1at Hitler's sexual life was perfectly normal."

People have gone so far as to set the greatest possible value on a So-
viet report devoted to the examination of Hitler's corpse. According to
this report tl1e Fuehrer had possessed only one testicle!
The body having been tot.ally carbonized with 200 liters of gasoline
on April 30, 1945 in tl1e grave ac\jacent to the Chancellery bunker, it is dif-
ficult to see how Stalin managed to snaffle that swprising sexual organ for
his collection of war souvenirs. A bit later they had to sing a different
tune and admit that the body presented as that of Hitler was wearing
socks that had been patched! That they had withstood for two hours afire
of two hundred liters of burning gasoline partakes of a super-miracle.
"The truth is," Werner Maser concludes, "that Hitler never felt linked
to a woman, to a man, to relatives, to friends, or to social groups. He was
sufficient unto himself."
The fact that Hitler did not succumb to them at all became an addi-
tional stimulant for the women. The most intelligent of them sublimated
their affection. One would consider herself his adoptive mother. Another,
Helene Berstein, who at first had been content to give Hitler one of her
husband's hats to replace his old faded felt one, at a particularly difficult
point in Hitler's struggle emptied her jewehy box, giving him an assort-
ment of diamonds, sapphires, rubies and emeralds, a solitaire and a plat-
inum pendant These marvels, coming at a time when he was in severe
straits, were worth sixty thousand Swiss francs to Hitler!
Gertrude von Seidlitz, the owner of Finnish paper mills, put half of
her fortune at his disposal. Another woman contributed half of a large in-
heritance. There was even a madam of so-called houses of "ill fame" who
regularly contributed the principal portion of her pious receipts to the
movement!
Hitler did not in any way solicit these gifts, nor any other gifts. He did
not ever wish to be dependent on the generosity of enthusiasts or self-
seeking donors. The major part of the NSDAP's money was provided by
the dues of tens of thousands of members and by their meetings.
During the early years there was an occasional financial contribution
or other, either from the Munich industrialist, Hennan Aust, or from the
manufacturer of locomotives, Ernst von Borsig.
In those days it was generally not to Hitler but to Gen. Erich Luden-
dorff that these gifts by financiers were sent. Fritz Thyssen, the industri-
alist, made a gift of a hundred thousand marks to the general to deliver
158 I lllTI.EH DEMOCRAT
to Hitler. But apart from these tlu-ee capitalist benefactors, nothing!

Hitler was as tough in t11ese matters as tl1e hide of a crocodile. You
could give him 1noney. Fine. But you better not try to use it as an instru-
n1ent of p~ure. He didn't give tlmnks or conunit hiluself in any way.
"If so1neone puts a nlillion 1narks on the table," Hitler explained, "I'll
rake tl1em wit11out hesitation, tu1le$ son1etlling is asked of 1ne in return,
anything whatsoever."
Gen. Franz Ritter von Epp also sent tl1e Ludendorff-Roehn1 team
60,000 marks taken fron1 tl1e anny's secret funds.
"This assistance," Raymond Cartier, the h.istolian, states, "did not ex-
ceed the scale of individual gifts."
In any case they were only a few rivulets joining tl1e stream of tl1e hun-
dreds of tl1ousands of n1arks-soon millions of marks-furnished by tl1e
contributions of tlle tllousands and thousands of adherents who were
sacrificing tlle1nselves, and by tJ1e speeches of Hitler, who was worldng
hi111self tllin going from one speaker's platform to the next. Each time,
1narks by the tl1ousands fell tllick and fast.
If wo1nen, witl1 tl1eir infallible intuition of male reality, had been tl1e
first to adopt Hitler, men of quality, despite a bit of secret irritation, had
rapidly been fascinated in turn.
Hitler was an exceptionally gifted hmnan being-everyone was in ac-
cord on that point His culture was immense; his memory was a library.
To have read more than he had was untl1inkable. His intellectual
panorama was that of a mountain climber who views the world from the
top of Mont Blanc.
Seeing llis first cohorts marching by, tramping the pavements of Mu-
nich, shouting their guttural appeals, one 1night have thought that tl1eir
leader was a rough Land.sk:necht. But he was a refined artist who ap-
peared in society, where he revealed himself t.o be pleasant and lively and
talked for hows of Vermeer, or of Delft, or of Botticelli.
Above all, he was most passionately fond of music. He fairly lived for
the music of Wagner.
The only luxury he allowed himself during the early years was a rick-
ety used upright piano iliat was always about to collapse if it was played
too enthusiastically. For lack of space, he had installed it in the corridor
of his little personal refuge. In his moments of lassitude, he recovered his
optimism by playing a Bach fugue, or had his friends play some Mozart
or Chopin or Beethoven, or "the Death of Love" from Trist,an and Isolde,
CONQUEST DY CAPTIVATION 159
or even Richard Strauss. He also had a passion for flowers.

h1 society he tried never to overreach himself. He was not up on all the
customs. He didn't pretend he was used to fancy food; he would lean
over to tl1e mistress of the house and say: "Could you be so kind as to tell
me how tlus dish is eaten?"
He could have bluffed, but he was witl1out affectation.
It is ahnost impossible-since any praise of Hitler is forbidden-to
speak of lus delicacy offeeling.
It is reflected especially in his poems. To find any of them today is
work for an archivist. Most of them were taken to tl1e United States in
1945. These poems are not the equal of the lyric poetry of Schiller, but
their inspiration is revelatory of a great sensitivity. One of these poems,
found in tl1e national archives in Washington, will seem mediocre to cyn-
ics, but it is profoundly moving, recalling as it does his dead mother:
When your mother has grown older,
And you have grown older,
When what was fonnerly easy and effortless
Now becomes a burden,
When her dear loyal eyes
Do not look out into life as before,
When her legs have grown tired
And do not want to carry her anymore-
Then give her your arm for support,
Accompany her with gladness and joy.
The hour will come when, weeping, you
Will accompany her on her last journey!
And if she asks you, answer her.

And if she asks again, speak also.
And if she asks anotl1er tilne, speak to her
Not stonnily, but in gentle peace!
And if she cannot understand you well,
Explain everytl1ing joyfully;
The hour will come, the bitter hour,
When her moutll will ask no more!
The Hitler expressing such love for his motller tllfOughout tllis touch-
ing threnody was a Hitler in tl\e 1nidst of a fight for his life.
It was not long before tl,e 1nost diverse personalities were conung to
Hitler. University professors. Creators of industry. Writers. Legends of
the First World War such as Grand Achniral Alfred von 'lirpitz. Political
leaders like Count von B~ing.
The elderI.v English publicist, Houston Stewart Chru.nberlain, after
having seen and listened to Hitler, would 1nake this prophetic state1nent:
"Great tasks await you. My confidence in Germanisrn has not been
shaken for a single n,01nent, altl,ough my expectations, I confess, have
fallen pretzy low. Now in one stroke, you have changed my state of mind.
Germany, in giving birtl\ to a Hitler at the m01nent of her greatest distress,
proves her vitality; tJ,e same goes for the radiant force one feels emanat-
ing fron1 you. 11\e two tllings, indeed, go hand in hand. May God protect
you."
,vemer Maser felt compelled to state: "In plain fact, tl1e intellectuals
have fallen in step with Hitler. TI,e fascination of tl,e Hitlerian ideology
has had an effect on them, too."
As early as 1920, tJ,e great German writer, Rudolf Jung, declared that
"Hitler will one day be our greatest man."
Hitler, however, never felt any admiration in return vis-a-vis the intel-
lectuals. They often irritated him with their self-conceit. Many of those
who pompously called themselves intellectuals often had, in fact, no
more than a veneer of intellectuality. They hung a diploma on the wall
like the bulletin board listing prices at the butcher's. This title of glory
has a wide gilt frame. And then? What do they know? In particular, what
conception do they have of the world and of mankind?
Their pretensions are often the equal of their mediocrity. They look
down their noses at anyone who hasn't obtained his letters patent, as they
have, this diploma which tl\ey think establishes their exclusive superiority
for all time.
Hitler had genius. But for your average "intellectual," what is genius?
For him, the sum of knowledge is his sheepskin. Genius is not in his
range of experience. It makes him uncomfortable. It seems almost like
science fiction to him. He doesn't believe in it He is normal. By virtue of
what was Hitler beyond nonnal? Or especially, above normal?!
Hitler didn't dwell on it He knew very well tl\at you can't pass a camel
through tl\e eye of a needle.
Besides, Hitler did not trust intellectuals.
CONQUEST BY CAPTIVATION I 161
Many of these semi-calculators were ainbitious little men. The work-

ingman is openhearted; he gives of himself; he doesn't weigh everything.
The petty lawyer reckons: "If I enroll in his party, will Hitler give me a
build-up? Shall I not one day become a regional deputy, or even a member
of the Reichstag?"
Hitler saw through these ulterior motives so clearly that he decreed
that in any and every organimtion of the partY, there would be a numerus
clausus of intellectuals: t11at at least two-thirds of the members had to
come from the middle class of people, the little people who constitute
the frainework of nations, as well as from the proletariat that is the good
red blood of the country, the very basis of its life.
As for the women, that was another matter.
If women in politics were instinct and elan, they were also constancy.
He was delighted to see women by the thousands attending his meetings.
Once they are over, he laughingly explained, the men scatter into t11e
nearby cafes, and the effect of the speech grows blurred; but if the wife
is there and immediately takes her husband home, the meeting is recre-
ated between the two of them. It doesn't take flight; it becomes anchored!
'111us, for Hitler, women were notjust the grace, the wonder, the gift
of beauty of the gods; they were the foundation of National Socialism in
family life.
The mother inculcated the fait11. The daughter gave it drive. The illu-
mination they had experienced made them radiant transmitters of the
most effective propaganda
Women, who had been shunted aside from politics up to then, would
quickly become an essential element of National Socialism, giving it a
quality of romanticism, so important to Gennan sensibilities, and an ex-
pansive force more mysterious and much more subtle and lasting than
that given by men.
This understanding on Hitler's part of the feminine genius was also
something new in the Gennany of 1921.
Millions of women year after year would gather in masses behind
Hitler with their passion, their gifts, their bewitching and infectious dy-
nainism. They would be the first feminine shock force in the modem po-
litical world. Hitler, in espousing Gennany, his only tn1e love, had
espoused all of them.
Raymond Poincare was a warmongering French politician and anti-German racist.
Angry that Germany could not pay the exorbitant •reparations" demanded by the Allies
for their campaign of aggression in World War I, Poincare ordered the French Army
to invade Germany, occupy the Rhineland and seize the factories and the property of
this ancient German region. This invasion and occupation was successful until Hitler
came to power and expelled the French aggressors in 1935. wiK1PED1A
CHAPTER
THE POLES OF THE RUHR
nlikely as it may seem (and .figuratively speaking), on Jan.

11, 1923, President Poincare was going to enter the Ruhr
riding on the back of a telegraph pole. We must leave it to
the great Frenchjoumalist Cartier to comment for us on this
cavalcade of the crabby bookkeeper of his country:
There was a shortage of 100,000 telegraph poles in the deliv-

eries in kind by Gennany in 1922. As early as Jan. 9, 1923, Ray-
mond Poincare had the shortage verified by the 'Reparations
Commission' and asked that it recognize that irtjured nations had
just cause to apply whatever sanctions they judged appropriate.
The default invoked was only a pretext. A delay in the delivery
of a million tons of coal because of transportation difficulties was
scarcely more valid. The need to occupy the Ruhr was itching
French nationalism like pruritis. It had advanced right up to the
edges of it in 1921 in occupying Duesseldoif, Deusburg and
Ruhrort. It saw the smoke and red glow of the industrial basin.
The source of Gennan power was there, and it would be striking
a decisive blow to seize it The French would help themselves to
coal right at the pithead of the mines, and above all, in attacking
Gennany in her economic heart, they would bring about a distur-
bance capable of breaking the unity that the negotiators of 1919
had been wrong to let remain in existence.
Poincare, it will be re1ne1nbered, as early as July 26, 1922 had

wu,ounced this plan to the press: "'fhe onlv 1neans of saving the
'Ireaty of Versailles is to act in such a way tlmt our defeated ad-
versaiies ru-e not able to fulfill its tenns." The plan of occupation
had long been ready.
Jacques Benoist-Mechin, tlle other great beacon of histo1y as seen by

tJ,e French, is no less e>.l)licit "Gennany was to deliver 200,000 cubic me-
ters of telegraph poles t.o France before the end of 1922. Well, by the 15th
of Decen,ber, she had only delivered 65,000 cubic 1ueters. It was this clif-
ferenee of 135,000 cubic 1neters of telegraph poles tlmt decided the occu-
pation of the Ruhr as a last resort."
Gennany, worn out fronl the burden of the reparations, could do no
n,ore. If not enough poles were provided, it was because she had not been
able to saw up ruzy more. She lalew that France would not hesitate to
ju1up on her-she would not have risked tl,e invasion if she had been
able to deliver a few more rafts of those blasted poles.
..Gennany," Gustav Stresemann pleaded, "has far exceeded bearable
lbnits in the n,anner in which she has carried out the treaty."
The pretext of tllese telegraph poles -the 1naterial importance of
which was insignifiCallt-was going to have repercussions abroad.
"Never since tlle Trojan War," Sir John Bradbury, the British delegate,
would say, witll tlle cold irony of the English, "has wood played so fatal
a role in the history of nations." This new Trojan horse, indeed, was
cram1ned to the eyebrows not with wily Greeks, but with dynamite.
Since Nov.11, 1918, that is to say, since the very day of the annistice,
Poincare had been waiting for an occasion to thrust the French army be-
yond the Rhine.
He had extended the power of Paris to Alsace-Lorraine, an ancient
Gennanic land that had been slightly Frenchified in the course of the cav-
alry jaW\ts of Louis XIV and the invasion of the sanscufuttes of the French
Revolution.
He had seized by force, for 15 years, the political, military and eco-
nomic control of the Saar.
He had sent the French army to encamp throughout the Rhineland
and had even set up vast bridgeheads on the right bank of the Rhine.
In the east, in violation of the "right of peoples to self-detennination,"
he had secured two willing henchmen, an artificial Poland in which half
THE POLES OF THE RUHR I 165
of the inhabitants were Ukrainians, Ruthenians, White Russians, Jews

and Gennans, and a Czechoslovalda in which 50 percent of the inhabi-
tants, tl1e Czechs, ruled with the lash the other 50 percent-composed
of Gennans, Slovaks, Hungarians and Jews-under their yoke.
In this way France, mistress militarily of western Germany, thanks to
these two military satellites, would hem in Germany of the east as well.
The new Polish border, or more exactly, FrancerPolish border, was only
an hour from Berlin by truck.
But that wasn't enough. M. Poincare meant to dismember Germany.
He had slipped into the old moth-eaten cassock of Cardinal Richelieu. He
could hardly fragment the territory of Germany into three hundred prin-
cipalities, as in the glorious days of the Treaty of Westphalia, but he
wanted at least to cut her up into a few little rival states: a Bavarian state
to the south; and, between France and the Rhine, a supposedly independ-
ent Rhineland.
The entire postwar period had been nothing but a deceitful series of
machinations aitned at fomenting Bavarian separatism and creating,
tl1rougl1 the Rhineland and in the Palatinate, republics separate from the
Reich.
Gen. Charles Mangin had been a particularly Machiavellian expert in
the igniting of these various uprisings.
Only the pere1nptory riposte of an incensed Wilson, forewarned at
times by the co1n1nander-in-chief of the American troops in the
Rhineland, had forced Poincare to put these republics temporarily on
the shelf.
He was only waiting for the moment to bring them out again.
Above all else, Poincare's great objective was the Ruhr that provided
Gennany-a Germany that had just been despoiled of her mines and met-
allurgical industries of Upper Silesia ~f 85 percent of her steel and 80
percent of her coal.
Occupying the Ruhr, getting his hooks on her steel and on her coal,
would ruin and destroy the Reich for once and all.
Earlier, in 1921, on the 7th of March, the fatal blow had come within
an inch of succeeding.
The occasion had been furnished by terrorists who were getting
their orders by radio from Moscow. The Communists of Germany had
just fomented a new revolution in the Ruhr and were committing fright-
ful atrocities. As historian Joachim Fest has recounted:
'l11ey seized tl1e "levers of control" particularly in Central Ger-

many and in tl1e Ruhr basin. Their watchword "arm the prole-
tariat" found a receptive audience. Very quickly, following a
n1obilization canied out aln1ost witl1out hitches, testifying to a
carefully elaborated plan, vast numbers of effectives were sepa-
rated into solid nlil.itary fom1ations. And, in t11e region situated
between tl1e Rhine and t11e Ruhr, a "Red Army" of 50,000 men had
been raised.
In a few days it had conquered almost the whole of the indus-
trial basin. The feeble units of the Reichswehr and of the police
that tried to resist were eliminated. And in certain localities, ver-
itable battles took place. A wave of assassinations and pillaging
and arson swept over the land.
If they were to attempt to contain this terror, the only route for the
handful of soldiers the Reich still ~essed involved not just crossing
the territory on the right bank of the Rhine occupied by the Allies, but
the transport of a few scant troops ac~ the short strip of territory on
the other side of the Rhine that was simply demilitarized at Versailles.
The Gennans had anxiously asked that they be authorized to take this
corridor. They asked again and again. No response. Finally, they could
not let any more of their compatriots be massacred, and a few units of the
remaining Gennan anny, almost without anns, used the corridor. British
Prime Minister David Lloyd George had given his consent France, no!
French troops were immediat.ely hurled against Dannstadt and Frankfort
as punishment for this simple German action for public safety.
On March 7, 1921, Poincare gave us a new version of the coup.
Forty thousand Bavarian veterans, members of the "Steel Helmet,"
had held a perfectly nonnal assembly of comrades in Munich. Berlin had
not forbidden it The instantaneous response: a second French invasion
had been launched, spreading to D~eldorf, Ruhrort, Deusburg and the
neighboring ports.
On Jan. 9, 1922, a third edition came out But this time it was no longer
just a few large towns; it was the entire Ruhr--namely 80 percent of the
industrial life of Germany-that was going to be overrun.
hnmediately after tlle announcement of this new invasion by Poin-
care, the United States ambassador in Paris, Mr. Child, had been seized
with such indignation that he had proposed to Secretary of State Charles
THE POLES OF THE RUHR I 167
Evans Hughes that he "go over the head of the French government with
an inunediate direct appeal to public opinion."
The British were still more definitely opposed to Poincare's piratical
operation.
"After consultation with the legal counselors of the crown," French
historian Cartier notes, "Lord Curzon, Foreign Secretary of Great Britain,
would declare and would establish in a 55-page report that this was a
matter of a violation of the Treaty of Versailles: 'the occupation of the
Ruhr constitutes an aggression in time of peace and a violation of the
Treaty of Versailles.'"
Some people would have the cheek to declare later that in occupying
the Rhineland in 1935, it was Hitler who had broken the treaty. But the
British statement is there: M. Poincare had tom it to pieces 15 years ear-
lier, on Jan. 11, 1922, the day when the French military tide-and a Bel-
gian division-spread out over the Rul1r, the largest industrial center of
the West
The English and the Americans made their opposition to this adven-
ture quite clear, and in France likewise important persons went on record
that they were not at all in agreement with the president of the republic.
Marshal Foch, for all he was beset by the Rhenish itch, had inunediately
called this affair of the Ruhr "a scurvy business." The future Prime Min-
ister Edouard Herriot, while keeping it fro1n his colleagues, had said
under his breath: "I personally consider the occupation of the Ruhr ille-
gitimate, but I do have to take a certain French opinion into account." As
for Clemenceau, the old "Tiger," who had spent his life hating Gennans,
he flatly declared his opposition to it
The future would quickly prove him right
This "anned attack," this "outrage against a people, its territory and its
economic life," as Stresemann declared, had done iajury to all of Ger-
many, as though she had been skinned alive.
The French bayonets had hardly been flashed in the streets of Essen,
on Jan. 18, 1922, than terrible decrees of seizure came crashing down: on
customs receipts, on taxes, on coal, on the state forests, on n1anufactur-
ing licenses! Everything was confiscated.
Eight days later, detennined to bring Gennany to her knees in the bit-
ter cold (it was the 26th of January) and shut down all the factories in
unoccupied Gennany, thus putting millions out of work, Poincare banned
the shipment of coal or coke from the Ruhr to any part of Gennany not
occupied by tl1e Allies.

41
1n this way," tlle French "Gauleiter" of the invaded Ruhr, M. Paul
'Iirard, calmly announced, 41fl1e Rhineland and tile Ruhr are going to be to-
tall.v separated front tl1e rest of Gennany."
That was exactly what M. Poincare wanted: a West Gennany that he
would cut into pieces and an East Gennany doomed to economic de-
struction.
The working m~ in tile Ruhr had received tl1e occupation forces
witlt patriotism. They had greeted tl1em by singing Die Wacht am Rhein,
the Rcich,s second national antllem. Response: mass arrests, enonnous
fines, hwuiliations of all kinds, and finally tile fusillade.
Yes, tile fusillade! The Krupp workers-not capitalists even so-had
taken it upon tl1en1Selves to demonstrate in tlleir factories in favor of lib-
erty. The French troops fired on tllem: thirteen dead, about 30 wounded
Five hw\Clred thousand Ruhr workers massed silently at tile funeral,
witl1 heads bowed. New sanctions! For weeks the French courts-martial
would be working full speed, not against the officers who had ordered the
firing on a defenseless crowd, but against the owner and tile directors of
Krupp: 15 years, 20 years in prison!
On top of that would come expulsions: 140,000 Gennans were ex-
pelled from tile Ruhr.
At tile height of this national tragedy, how had Hitler, the preeminent
nationalist, reacted?
CHAPTER
HITLER'S EMPHATIC •NO'
he government of the Reich had called on all German citizens

t;o unite against the invader by means of "passive resistance."
Contracy to all expectations, Hitler flatly refused t;o be asso-
ciated with it He knew very well that his decision was going
t;o arouse indignation. He paid that no heed. He had made his
decision: It would be no!
Why "no"? He lmew that the government of the Reich, unstable be-
cause it was a parliamentary government and the target of every trap set
by all those who were not Cabinet ministers (already eight governments
since Weimar, one every six months!), would be incapable of leading the
resisters t;o victory. It would not have the guts. It would flounder and col-
lapse.
Hitler believed that to render the invasion inviable, it would be neces-
sary t.o do as in Russia: t.o leave nothing behind but scorched earth, t;o de-
stroy everything, so that France, empty-handed, herself ruined by the
enonnous costs of her military campaign and hanied on all sides, would
experience a second Berezina
"Of what importance is it," he declared to the mini-resisters of Berlin,
"if in the catastrophe of our epoch some fact;ories are destroyed? The
blast furnaces can explode and the bridges be blown up one after another.
The French army will no longer be able t;o go farther astray in that kind
of a doomsday horror."
Hitler didn't fear such massive destruction in the least: "When the Ger-
num people rise again, all the rest will rise."

\Vas it not like tJ1at in 1945, notwithstanding tl1at tl1e Second World
\llar had destroyed all of Gennany right down to its foundations?
Furtl1ennore, Hitler did not wish to sully his 1nove1nent by involving
it in the dubious demonstrations of sterile parties tl1at were sure to quit
in tl1e nliddle of tl1e fight, as they had done previously when tl1ey had to
1nake a decision on tl1e signing of the Treaty of Versailles.
If U1ey now linlited tl1eir opposition to tl1e invaders to passive resist-
ance, U1e threat. of losing the contest was 1nuch 1nore fonnidable still, es-
pecially in this terrible winter of 1923 when the Gennan people were
witJ1out work, hungry, and econonlically, socially and politically at tl1e
n1ercy of a pitiless foe who was armed to the teeth and encainped right
on Gennan soil.
"111e road to Berlin will p3$ through a river of blood," Minister Gen-
eral \Vtlhehn von Seeckt had said. Nothing but talk. The phantom German
anny wouldn't hold out against the divisions and tanks of the French for
24 hours. Only an enonnous, a constaI\t, an in1placable sabotage could
n1ake life in1possible for Poincare.
The de1nocratic power of Berlin, a weakling tre1nbling at ilie idea of
assuming any responsibility, would never have the guts to put up an active
resistai1ce instead of a passive resistance tl1at was a lost cause in advance.
Hitler did not have the slightest confidence either in the head of the
govenm1ent of the Reich, the supercapitalist Cuno. Events would prove
hin1 right. In August, Cuno would give up and resign, his battle of tl1e
Ruhr lost
For Hitler to associate llimself with these weak and comtpt politicians
would benefit only them.
"That kind of stupid reconciliation between the parties would be ilie
death of us. For us to line up with them and, particularly, with ilie Marx-
ists, would mean sinking into anonymity."
For him, just as much the enemy as the invaders were the politicians
who, through cowardice and incapacity, had 1nade the outrage of tl1e
Ruhr possible. Instead of fraternizing with them, it was as imperative to
pitch into them as into the foreign troops. And even first.
Hitler told tl1e Gennans: "Only when you have extenninated that rab-
ble can the regeneration of Gennany and the fight for her rights begin."
Going tllus counter to general opinion demanded a degree of self-con-
trol and a vision of the future exceeding the ordinary.
HITLER'S EMPHATIC 'NO' I 171
"With remarkable logic," says Fest, the German historian, "in spite of
all tl1e enmities and even against the imposing authority of Ludendorff, he
[Hitler] maintained the thesis that it was necessacy first to settle accounts
with the internal enemy."
No active resistance without a preliminary purification.
"The first political decision Hitler took that went beyond local limits
demonstrated a disavowal of all that false fraternity that was the rule
from Kahr to Papen. It proved beyond any question that, forced to choooe,
he acted as a veritable revolutionary."
When he fought, he wanted it to be all out, Fest recalls:
"There is no doubt tl1at Hitler was animated by the same will to put up
a defense as the other forces and parties. Apart from the reasons men-
tioned above, his refusal was aimed not so much at the resistance itself,
as at tl1e passive resistance, the halfway resistance."
Normally, in taking so outspokenly a position that was both negativist
and maximalist at tl1e same time, Hitler would be running a great risk of
discrediting himself.
With great self-satisfaction, the under-secretary of state, Herr Daniel
von Hainhausen, said to Chancellor Wtlhelm Cuno: "Many people no
longer speak of hi.tn without shrugging the'"ir shoulders." Herr Cuno would
not shrug his shoulders for very long. The French had hardly more than
settled into their barracks at Essen when Hitler appeared before a great
crowd at the famous Biirgerbriiuhaus, where he had so many times set
tl1e public on their ears.
His speech would be totally imprudent. His theme: "Enemy number
one is tl1e Weimar reghne. Let us not be impressed by appeals for ajoini.tlg
together in which everyone will fail and we shall find ourselves compro-
mised. Our three nilllion comrades who fell on the western front and on
the Eastern Front would not forgive us for betraying them by placing our
hands in tl1e hands of the saboteurs of November 1918. A public demon-
stration of mourning has been called for tomorrow: The NSDAP will not
participate in this false demonstration of patriotism."
These sentences fell on the crowd like grenades. Hitler was un-
daunted. He convoked a national congress at Munich for the 17th ofJan-
uary-that is, two weeks after the invasion. He announced that he would
hold twelve big meetings there on the same day, scattered through the
various districts of the Bavarian capital.
If the Weimar regime had truly thought Hitler had made a mistake in
taking a stand against tJ1e ntlni-resistance of the government, they ought

to have let hitn go ahead and fall on his face, tl1ereby administering proof
that the people would not follow him.
'111e contracy was what took place. Witl1 a startling lack of psychology,
the Bavarian govenunent, in accord witl1 Berlin, co1nmitted the gaffe that
tl1e least dab of political sense ought to have made them avoid: 'll1ey flatly
banned Hitler's twelve big meetings as well as all processions and the
wearing of National Socialist insignia.
Fortunately for Hitler, he already had important confederates in ilie
army. '111ey put pressure on tl1e Bavarian government As ever in a democ-
racy, they split the difference, auiliorizing six meetings instead of twelve.
Hitler immediately seized tlle official six meetings. He would get the
other half of the bargain as well on Jan. 27, 1922, when, without asking au-
thorization from anyone, he actually held his twelve meetings.
"The Nazi congress," Joachim Fest recounts, "was a triumph. The
Krone Circus, full up to the rafters, resounds for the first time with the cry
thought up by Dietrich Eckart: 'Deut,schland Erwache!' ['Gennany,
Awake!'-Ed.] The delivery to 600 SA of brand new banners, designed by
Hitler on the model of Roman eagles, takes place on the Marsplatz despite
being banned. Then, with music and flags in the van, the Hitler troops tra-
verse the center of Munich to reach the Kindlkeller on the other bank of
the Jsar. The roadblocks are opened ahead of them. The Bavarian gov-
ernment unhappily realizes that it is not entirely sure of its police."
Thus, contrary to all predictions, Hitler triumphed that day. God
knows, however, that his colleagues had been uneasy. Roehm himself
would sigh: "Hitler has put himself on the spot. He is risking a devastating
loss of prestige."
But the Gennan public had understood. The proof of it had just been
given. His governmental opponents had been discredited, their bans
flouted.
Hitler was the man of tlle impossible: "The impossible always suc-
ceeds," he declared. "The improbable is the surest thing there is." He
added: "Once we lose our will, we lose everything. Life is a battle." Where
anyone eJse would have lost, Hitler was going to win. Month after month,
events would prove him right
In the Ruhr, active resistance in the Hitler style was making the occu-
piers tremble: 86 attacks during tlle montll of March alone. The railroad
bridge of Dueren was blown up. Then it was the turn of the Duisburg
HITLER'S EMPHATIC •NO' 173
bridge: 12 soldiers of the occupation troops killed, 20 wounded.

Tirard, tl1e French governor, wrote: "Our men found tl1emselves facing
unprecedented difficulties.,,
With the Gennan employees responding to every order of the occupy-
ing forces witl1 a detennined "no," it was going to be necessacy to bring
12,000 agents of the French and Belgian railroads into the Ruhr. The
12,000 foreign railwayinen shipped coal to their countries, to be sure, coal
t11at was still piled up at the pithead, but not coal extracted since the in-
vasion. Quite on the contrary, the production of the mines had fallen
nearly to zero. The invaders had shoveled up only the old stocks, and
these stocks had been exhausted in a few months.
If the Gennans were without coal, the French were now equally so.
Their own Lorraine industries, finding themselves without any Gennan
coal, were going to have to close their doors.
Extreme situations in military occupations inevitably lead to the same
outcome: the shedding of blood. On May 26, 1923, a Gennan Freikorps
saboteur, Lt Albert Leo Schlageter, fell under the hail of bullets from a
French firing squad. It was war, and war has its laws. But a national mar-
tyr had been born in tl1at pool of blood.
Crowds follow their passions. Now, exasperated, they saw the use-
lessness of the resistance being offered by official circles. Now they were
marching all the way with "Hitler tl1e Hard." Thirty thousand new mem-
bers were enrolled in tlle NSDAP, and people were thronging in so fast
that at one point it was even necessary at certain hours to close Ule Mu-
nich recn1itment offices.
Now, perhaps the only thing that might still shut Hitler up was a par-
ticularly hard brickbat hurled in his face: one morning the Munich Post
came out witl1 this new scare headline on the front page: "Hitler is in the
pay of the French!" Since Hitler had taken a stand against passive resist-
ance, to some people, the accusation could seem likely.
For once, Hitler came near to breaking down. It was too infamous.
That night one of his friends had to play a part of Die Meistersinger for
him in his 111odest hideaway apartment, so that the great Wagnerian or-
chestration might give him serenity.
Of course, the accusation had no foundation. Hitler filed 10 lawsuits
against his calumniators and won them all. The defamers were all sen-
tenced, with tl1e exception of those who, realizing they couldn't dodge
the bullet, made a public retraction.
Hitler's whole history, as it is told to people today, is 1narked witl1 such

idiocies, from the Jewish grand1notl1er to poor Adolfs testicles, to cite
examples. But tJ1is low blow had been particularly ignoble.
11,e ntc~t outrageous charge,~ tl1at French bribery money had been
poured out in a flood! Notjust an insignificant smn. By no means! Eighty-
two thousand gold francs, an runount which, converted to marks, repre-
sented at l ~ ten truckl~ of Reichsbrulk bills in that particular month.
In Bavaria as elsewhere, France was carrying on her work of disrupt-
ing Gennan unity. NotwitltStanding tl1at it was prohibited by the Weimar
Constitution, she had established a legation in Munich led by a minister
plenipotentiary, M. Enlile Oard. The big man of this mission was a certain
Maj. Richert, a very in1portant agent of the futelligence Department who
eltjoyed the full confidence of M. Poincare.
These special agents first applied themselves to winning over Prince
Rupprecht, who was not malign but was burning to return to a palace
from which the fanlily had fled, falling into a ditch, on the evening of
Nov. 9, 1918, when the agitator Eisner had launched the Marxist revo-
lution at ?\iunich.
The said prince had not died, sword in hand, on the threshold of his
office. He was susceptible to the song of the French sirens who explained
to him that it was only in a Bavaria separated from the Reich 3lld "under
the aegis of the French" that he would be able once again to put on his
high boots and flaunt the plumes of his newly repolished helmet in a mar-
tial manner.
That was not the worst of it Princes adore toys. Much more devas-
tating was going to be the revelation of the plot hatched in Munich by
the French Major Richert It aimed at no less th3ll the assassination of
anyone who might prove 311 obstacle to the separatist movement or-
ganized from Paris.
The plot had been organized and prepared under Richert's orders and
thanks to his gold francs, by important Munich personalities, among them
a professor, Herr Fuchs, a celebrated orchestra director, Herr Machhaus,
3lld a legal counselor, Herr Kuehles.
These men were so indisputably guilty that when in March of 1922
they were arrested, two of the leaders of the intended putsch committed
suicide in their prison cells.
Professor Fuchs made a clean breast of the matter. The French hist.o-
rian Raymond Cartier has described it:
HITLER'S EMPHATIC 'NO' I 175
Fuchs and Machhaus had met with Richert in Stuttgart, Wies-

baden, Mayence, Reichenhall and Munich, and each time large sums
in marks, francs or dollars had changed hands. The last meetings
had taken place between the 15th and the 21st of February in the
Munich residence of Machhaus, at 106 Leopoldstrasse, and at the
fann of a certain Guttermann, at Romenthal.
Richert had become importunate: "Of course," he had said,
"France will remain on the left bank of the Rhine, but providing
that you act quickly, she will fu1fill your desires ... Only five per-
sons know about our plan, but one of them is the President of
Council Raymond Poincare, and the other four are among the most
important men of France. The French action in the Ruhr furnishes
you with an opportunity whose like you'll never find again, and,
besides, the French army is ready to occupy the line of the Main to
cover you against any reaction by Berlin! But act! Don't wait, get
started!" Then Richert had handed Fuchs the equivalent of22,000
gold marks.
"The action demanded by Richert," Cartier adds, "consisted of a sep-

aratist putsch; 100 persons were to be assassinated."
The legal counselor, Kuehles, was sentenced to 20 years in prison.
TI1e true culprit, Major Richert, Poincare's jack-of-all-trades, the man
who, with the aim of separating Bavaria from Germany, had coldly pre-
pared for the assassination of 100 men, got off without any harm what-
soever. Poincare was all powerful and had his agent transferred to a
French provincial town.
The Hitler affair, allegedly paid for by the French, collapsed. But still
more important for his propaganda, another piece of treachery against
Gennany by Poincare had been exposed in broad daylight
An irascible man, Poincare continued his work as a wrecker in the
Ruhr unabated.
This richest land of the Reich had become a cemetery. And in unoc-
cupied Germany, deprived of the means of subsistence, an entire people
had fallen into a state of catalepsy.
That gave Poincare great satisfaction, despite the fact that the taking
of the Ruhr in pawn had proved a catastrophe.
Germany was sinking: For Poincare, that was the main thing. He
wouldn't have loosened her gallows rope a millimeter for anything in the
world.
"Gennany will wait in vain for any wavering on our prut," he declared
at.Dunkirk on April 16, 1923.
Titis boastfuln~ of Poincare's was his undoing.
His calculations boo1uenu,ged on him in the Reich itself in just a few
1uontllS. Pushing the Gennru,s to tl,e Unlit of tl,eir endurance, he flung
them en ·masse in Hitler's direction.
Stre.sen,ruu, would 1uake this shrewd observation: "I believe I recall
having stated that every speech given by M. Poincare on Sunday helped
the nationalists win another hundred tl,ousand votes. I was nlistaken, but
only in being very much under tlte accurate figure."
As Cartier said of Poincare: "He deserves to go into tl,e history books
as Hitler's principal stepping-stone."
h1contestablv, he was.
n,ru,ks to Poincare, tl,e National Socialist Party had doubled its rnern-
bersllip in a few n1ontl~.
On tl,e first of September 1923 a hundred thousand Gennans came
togetl,er in Nure1nberg. Not a hundred thousand Hitlerites, but a hundred
thousand patriots who were going to becon,e Hitlelites. Hitler spoke at
the six big n1eetin~ of tllis "Gerntan Day."
The Nure1nberg state police drafted a long report on this vast gatller-
ing. This is how tileir informallts described the fervor of the crowd greet-
ing Hitler and the guests of honor:
"Hwuireds of am~ were waving handkerchiefs at the1n. Flowers and
,vreaths rained down upon tilem from all sides. It was like the joyful cry
of tilousands of disheartened, intinlidated, humiliated, overwhehned peo-
ple who, in tile midst of tileir enslavement and their distress, sense a ray
of hope. ltfany of tile men and women were crying."
Powerful cohorts of the SA had paraded by, admired and acclaimed.
At the end of tile public gatilering, all the national parties of soutllem
Gennany come togetiler in this "Gennan Day" at Nure1nberg decided to
set up a common front of battle: the Deut.scher Kampjbund (German
Fighting Group).
And who should be entrusted with its command if not the master
swayer of crowds, the best organized leader, the most detennined fighter?
So it was. Three weeks later, thanks to tile blindness of Poincare,
Hitler became the sole leader.
CHAPTER
MILITARY REUNIFICATION
n the strength of the imprudent me~es of its amb~or

in Berlin, the French government, on April 17, 1934, had
broken off all clisannament negotiations without concern
for antagonizing the British. 111e French were relying on the
tens of billions of francs they had been putting into their na-
tional annaments and above all into their massive defensive network that
ran to Belgium's border and the Ardennes forest region, the Maginot Line.
The French chief of staff had stated with Olympian assurance, "We
shall see how much time it will take Germany to catch up to the twenty
billions we have put into our annaments." (J.B. Duroselle, p.166.)
By way of information he had received, France's President Gaston
Doumergue was convinced that Hitler was on the point of being over-
thrown-or assassinated. 111e German anny in 1934 was in a state of ab-
solute inferiority in n1en and 1nateriel. Doumergue rubbed his hands in
anticipation.
But this aged contemporary of Bismarck had no idea of what was re-
ally going on in the Third Reich, where the essentials were already in
place throughout the country for a swift modernization of the army: the
prototypes, the 1nanufacturing plans, the specialized workshops. At the
moment, however, Hitler was still only in the planning stage. The anny
was still training with its mock-up tanks made of cardboard. And swal-
lows still corrunanded the German skies.
In 1934 Paris believed that a war against the Reich would be little more
l i8 I HITLER DEMOCRAT
h81Ndous than a parade. Tile govenunent envisioned French tanks driv-

ing front tlte French-occupied Ruhr to Berlin as though co1npeting in a
rally. h\ 1934, tltat ~ not altogether ilnprobable.
When reanning, Hitler knew tlte risk he was rumung. All that he had
built could be brought down in a week. Militmily, he would be unable to
prevail.
Creating a thoroughly 1noden1 anny, and 1naking it t.echnically supe-
rior to all the otl1ers, would be a long-tenn priority task. And until Ger-
nW\Y had such an anny, she would be a the n1ercy of a still antagonistic
France.
The task was no siinple one. It was notjust a technical matter, but so-
cial and political as well. TI1e Gem1an anny of 1933 was very different
front the society that Hitler was in tlte process of organizing; one in which
social advancement~ open to all front tl1e n101nent they were the best
in their field.
The Reichswehr--Gennany's anny of 100,000 (as stipulated by the
Versailles Treaty}-was led al1nost exclusively by a privileged class of
nobles and squires. It had never tolerated Jewish officers in its ranks. Of
the several thousand professional officers, only seven Jews could be
COWlted among them in the postwar years. The German military had prac-
ticed "anti-Senlitism" long before Hitler thought of it
The officer caste had always considered itself to be a force set apart
from and above political parties, even governments. They were the Reich.
They were its conscience. The politicians only carried out orders. The of-
ficer caste didn't like them and watched them closely. A military dicta-
torship, within which they worked from behind the scenes, was the
system they preferred.
Hitler, with a following of three million militiamen, did not please
them. The political militia, the SA, really stuck in their craw. They consid-
ered them an offensive imitation of themselves.
But to Hitler, the SA and the Reichswehr were complementary organ-
izations; the intended purpose of the one being political, that of the other,
military. Without the SA, Hitler could not have torn apart the straitjacket
in which the old regime had tried to confine him. Without the Reichsweh.r,
the borders of the Reich would be wide open. Both were indispensable
for Germany. But they hated each other all the same. Gaining at least the
neutrality of this touchy officer corps had, by 1934, become far and away
Hitlefs most worrisome problem.
MILITAHY HEUNIJi'JCATION I 179
He had beaten tl1e une1nployinent proble1n: that was a question of

imagination, of will, and of material resources. He was sure of c01nplete
success tJ1ere. On tl1e otl1er hand, how was he to t:aine the nlilitary?
Hitler had not waited to becon1e chancellor before making an effort
in tJiat direction. As early as March 15, 1929, in the course of a 1nass meet-
ing, he had stated in detail what he considered the anny's "pri.tnordial
duty," adding: "Everyone in the Reichswehr in a position of comn1and re-
membered what Lenin had done with the czarist officers, the senior offi-
cers; before they were murdered, strips of bloody flesh had been carved
out of their le~ from top to botto1n, in a live imitation of the purple strips
of cloth marking the trousers won1 by staff officers. Everyone also had
present in his memory the outrages to which hundreds of Gennan officers
were subjected in Nove1nber of 1918, when Co1nmunists like Karl Lieb-
knecht and Rosa Luxe1nburg ruled tl1e streets of Berlin."
In this meeting, Hitler warned the heads of the Reichswehr fro1n afar
what would become of the1n if the Conununists were to prevail:
"You would tl1en be no more than political c01runissars of the regiine
and have to sing small or be hunted down and perhaps put up against a
wall and be shot" The Comn1unists in pre-Hitler Gennany were six mil-
lion strong, not too far behind Hitler's party in tenns of votes.
On Sept 23, 1930, Hitler had turned to the army a second time, using
as his tribune the Supreme Court of Leipzig, where he had been stun-
rnoned as a witness in an action brought against three young officers
being prosecuted for disseminating National Socialist propaganda witllin
their unit
With the greatest clarity, Hitler first reminded tl1e court of the exclu-
sively political role that he assigned to his protective nlilitia: ''The assault
detachments (SA) have been organized for the sole purpose of protecting
the party in its propaganda." Then, over t11e heads of the highest n1agis-
trates of the republic, he had addressed the anny itself:
"I have been a soldier long enough to know that it is inlpossible for a
political organization to combat the disciplined forces of the anny. I have
always made it loud and clear tl1at any attempt on our part to replace the
anny would be nonsensical. None of us wishes to replace U1e anny. My
only desire is tl1at the Gennan state and the German people be inlbued
witl1 a new spirit. Once we have come to power, we shall see to it tl1at a
great anny of tl1e Gennan people e1nerges from the present Reichswehr."
(Andre Brissaud, Hiller et son temps, p.103.)
The officers and especially tile young people who were already at-
tracted by Hitler's social doctrine had been so affected by his words that
the crowd, despite tlle majestic character of tlle sunoundings, had fran-
ticall.v applauded, to tbe utter stupefaction of tbe Buddha-like judges.
Diverse currents had begun to take shape. Notwithstanding the
13,402,547 votes (36.~ of total) obtained by Hitler on April 10, 1932,
Gen. \Vilhehu Groener, Reichswehr 1ninister and a regiine faitluul, did
not hesitate four days later to ban the SA, thus placing it politically out-
side the law. His rival and successor, Gen. Kurt von Schleicher, on the
otller hand, driven by his dogged mnbition, had attempted to gain rap-
port witll Hitler in tlle ratller vain hope of gaining his goodwill. To that
end, on the 6tll of June foilowing, he lifted the ban on the SA that his
predecessor had in1posed.
On Jm 30, 1933, after 10 years of a grueling political battle waged in
accordance with indisputably democratic electoral standards, Hitler,
head of the Reich's most powerful political party, had been elevated to the
chancellorship by Hindenburg: albeit with some hesitation.
Scarcely three days had elapsed when Hitler went to the Tiergarten
apartment of the commander-in-chief of the Heeresl,eitung [anny high
command], Gen. von Hmnmerstein. Less than a week before von Ham-
merstein had approached von Hindenburg with a view to preventing
Hitler from becoming chancellor.
At the expl'e$ request of the Fuehrer, Hammerstein had invited to his
table all of the principal heads of the Reichswehr: those of the high com-
nl31\d and those ofthe major militacy districts. Hitler had provided dessert
for the meal in the fonn of two hours of eloquence.
"Hitler," the historian, Brissaud, wrote, "knew marvelously well how
to use guile, how to play it by ear, using intelligence, patience, and great
finesse as well." (Brissaud, op.cit., p.109.) The chancellor succeeded in
changing the minds of his super top-brass audience by frankly disclosing
his intentions and his objectives:
"The goal," he said, "will be to give Germany back her political power
in Europe. To that end, the creation of a strengthened Reichswehr and the
re-e;tablishment of compulsory militacy service are the most important
requirements for achieving that goal." As for the SA, the spearhead of his
political combat, it would be kept entirely separate from the anny: "The
internal struggle is not the anny's affair."
Another fundamental point: "We have no intention of combining the
MILITARY REUNIFICATION I 181
army and the SA." That eventuality was the great fear of the military
caste. Hitler relieved them of it. As for the strong and authoritarian state
he intended to build, there he met with an almost unanimous state of
mind runong these high ranking military men enamored of discipline
and flnnness.
TI1e idea of seeing the anny increase in size enchanted them still more.
TI1e more divisions there were, the more promotions there would be. A
captain would become a colonel. The colonel would become a general or
perhaps even a marshal! All that silver and gold braid created a new, and
an extremely attractive, horizon before their eyes. "After having heard
him," Hammerstein would conclude, "we can have complete confidence
in the new chancellor of the Reich insofar as our interests and our mis-
sion are concerned."
From March of 1933 on, the wearing of the old historic black, white
and red cockade was reestablished on Hitler's orders. The barracks Con-
fidential Agent Councils, a creation of the Marxists, were abolished. The
grandiose opening ceremony for the first meeting of the new Reichstag,
carried out at the Potsdam palace on March 21, 1933, under the authority
of Marshal von Hindenburg, had filled the generals with pleasure and
pride. Now, flamboyant in their red collars, they were publicly honored
after having been so disparaged in 1919.
The military budget had been immediately and considerably in-
creased by Hitler. At the proper time, that would permit the transforma-
tion of the old Reichswehr, which had been paralyzed by its 12-year
enlistment period, into an agile, short-service militia Great moderation
had marked the new appointments. Hitler had even assigned key com-
mands to generals like Ludwig Beck and Friedrich Fromm, who had no
sympathy at all for National Socialism.
The personal response to Hitler, however, was not enthusiastic. The
generals accepted the chancellor-corporal, but that was all. And not pri-
marily to serve him, but to make use of him. Accustomed to looking down
on a government which they meant to keep under their control, many of
these high-ranking officers still considered the National Socialist regime
as a sort of bridge that they would cross at the first opportunity.
"Above all," says Andre Brissaud, the historian, "they see in Hitler an
excellent instrument they can make use of to replace the republican
regime with a military junta or a restored monarchy." Even Gen. Werner
von Blomberg, whom Hitler had included in his government, still spoke
182 I HITLEH DEMOCRAT
of simple "'benevolent neutrality."

"'\Ve nmst keep our distance," Blo1nberg explained to his fellow offi-
cers, "'as befits our status as tl,e fore1nost power in the nation. Our flag is
black, white and red, not the hooked cross. Our nillitary salute is not the
Hitler salute. The Horst Wessel song is to us just an expression of party
and is none of our concent"
The above sentin,ent is quite interesting in tl1at Blomberg had been
chosen because, of all the generals, he-along with Reichenau-see1ued
to come closest to the ideas of tl1e National Socialists.
Hitler was still not at the end of his difficulties. What continued to dis-
turb U,e generals was tl1at, despite Hitler's sootlling speeches, they still
saw the SA as a rival anny. In 1932 the SA had attained an enrollinent of
five hundred thousand. In 1933 it mustered tlu-ee million men, or thirty
thnes as 1nany as tl1e Reichswehr! To Hitler, these bntisers of tl1e SA were
nothing 1nore tl1an a political combat fonuation. But they had copied the
anuy at all points in the 111atter of ranks, and organization into battalions,
regiments and divisions. Even tenitorially, tl1eir districts closely copied
those of tl1e regular anuy. In Hitler's mind, the army's destiny lay in the
anned defense of tl1e nation, the protection of its borders. As for the SA,
its nlission was strictly of a civil and political nature.
Moreover, recruitment was completely different. The SA was made
up of tough customers, of fighters, men who for the most part had never
been soldiers. Most of their leaders were husky young guys full of spirit
and drive. So1ne of them had been lieutenants or captains in the First
World War, but most were only thirty or less in 1933, and too young to
have taken part in il But however young they were, SA leaders took
pleasure in their roles as honored officers.
The generals of the Reichswehr, who had been remarkably well
trained in strategy and t.actics at top military schools, and who had won
their braided epaulets after twenty or thirty years of service in the anny,
were not of a mind to let then1Selves be put on the same footing as these
makeshift generals of a Johnny-come-lately SA. Some of these newcom-
ers holding the highest ranks were still traveling salesmen or even door-
men only a few years before. These contrasting forces within tl1e nation
fonned two separate worlds, as clifferent from one anotl1er as a lion and
a chimpanzee.
CHAPTER
TERRITORIAl REUNIFICATION
n 1937, a final attempt made t;o bring Austria int;o the Allied camp
would misfire completely at tl1e time of the visit t;o Paris of the ill-
fated Elgelbert Dollfuss's successor, Chancellor Kurt von Schusch-
nigg. The French socialists, almost all of them Freemasons, were
the n1ortal enemies of the Austrian premier, who was a Christian
and anti-Marxist, hence aut;omatically a "fascist." Intimidated by the so-
cialists, the French government did not even dare t;o receive their Catholic
guest at the Paris station, but had hhn alight from his train almost clan-
destinely at Reuilly, a station of secondary rank.
The Austrian had a devout, modest bearing and a timid voice. Dressed
all in black, "he had more of the monastery than of the ministry about
him," they sneeringly said of him in the Chamber of Deputies, thereby
combining politeness with a delicacy of feeling.
They might at least on Sunday have let the Austrian chancellor attend
mass at Notre Dame de Paris. That mass was canceled and Schuschnigg
was shunted off to the archbishop's private chapel! Wherever he went,
they spirited hhn away.
"Schuschnigg gives me the impression of a council president on a fold-
ing seat," said Minister Herriot, who was something of a wag, filling his
pipe the while.
The French, instead of drawing hhn into their own ranks, were truly
tlU'Owing him into the arms of Gennany, where a great many of the Aus-
trians, the Marxists as well as the bourgeois nationalists, had for long
wished t;o be.
\\7 herever he went, tl1e luckless Schusclu1igg was treated by tl1e pr~
with insulting indifference.
Even the diplo1natic corps was indignant:
"How can the Quai d'Orsay in1agine it can stop the annexation of Aus-
tria when it doesn't even profess itself capable of having two railway plat-
fonns protected?" (Tabouis, p. 234.)
That business of tlle secret railway station galled Schusclmigg like a
sack of cen1ent on his sto1nach. Pierre Flandin, tl1e French minister con-
ducting Schuschnigg back to his departure platfonn, asked tlle Austrian
chancellor, in a voice he meant to be friendly, "Well, did you get to see
everything in Paris tllat you wanted to see?"
TI1e chancellor, dressed in his cutaway, made a stinging reply: "Yes, but
rd like to have seen a real railway station!"
Altl1ough Austria had been tom two ways in 1919 and had still been
undecided between Paris and Berlin, in tllose few days France had for-
ever lost any chance of winning Austria to her cause.
That left tlle Romanians, who, taking after tl1e Poles, did not seem to
wish to be convinced.
Romania also lmew that if-as France requested-she agreed to let
Soviet troops pass through her territory in order to attack Gennany in
the back, Moscow would attempt to establish herself between the
Danube and the Carpathian mountains forever.
The only solution left to France would be to drop temporarily any al-
lusion to the possible passage of Soviet troops. Besides, she would make
up for it in 1939, offering Stalin tlle right of passage that Poland and Ro-
mania refused him.
However, the nations of Eastern Europe, bluster as they might, could
nevertheless hardly long withstand the pressure of the French in 1934
and 1935. They drank their daily milk from the abundant udder of France.
They were all dependent upon her loans, upon her investments, and upon
the weapons she supplied, and had no choice but to string along. '111ey
would all do it slyly, playing it close to the chest, always ready to change
sides or betray.
For France, however, tlle reinforcement of this second front in Ger-
many's rear was a goal of absolute priority. If she intended to catch re-
nascent Gennany in a wolf trap, tlle east had to be one of the two doors
of the trap.
"The effective and rapid functioning of the system of reciprocal al-
TERRITORIAL REUNIFICATION I 185
liances was evidently of fundamental hnportance," wrote Prof. Pierre Re-

nouvh1. (Les crises duXXe Siede, vol. II, p. 34.)
At any rate, by considerably increasing the pressure on her satellites
and forcing their hand, Paris had got them to undertake so1ne few meas-
ures of reannrunent. The ulthnate effectiveness of such measures would,
of course, remain in doubt, but France reckoned they would at least
frighten and isolate the Germans.
In any event, "German demands" with regard to disannarnent or rear-
1nament-the Allies could take their choice-were not of much impor-
tance in 1934, since Germany possessed but a fifth of the military power
France had at her disposal in men, war materiel, fortifications, and her al-
lies of Eastern Europe.
Poland, tl1e most hesitant of those allies, had been co1npelled, whether
she liked it or not-to keep from having her supplies cut off-to decree
a first 1neasure to strengtl1en her armies: all men from seventeen to sixty-
five years of age would be subject to military service, either active or aux-
iliary. Women, too, would have to undergo "a preparatory stage" of
training.
On the first of January of 1935 the Czechs would take even more dra-
conian measures: they would be the first in tl1e West to institute a two-
year period of service.
That meant that all by themselves they would have an army superior
to tl1at possessed by Germany at the end of 1934: 202,000 men in seven
anny corps comprising troops of all categories: 1nountaineer infantry,
cavalry, 1notorized fonnations. Yet one would have been hard put, even
usmg bh1octtlars, to discover one single member of the Wehrmacht on
the Gennan border at that thne.
Romania for her part had added to her army by creating supplemen-
tary air squadrons-an air force that certainly could not have come out
of the pockets of the Bucharest taxpayers!
As for France, she broke all records in 1935 for nillitary defense spend-
ing: more tl1an 10 billion francs of that era
The explanation was made to the naive that tl1e billions were being
poured out because the Gennans were spending as much or 1nore, which
was con1pletely false. Today we have the official statistics, indisputable
figures down to a franc or a mark or a n1ble. France at tllat time was
spendmg twice as much as Germany for her army, even thougl1 the latter
had a much larger population and militarily was starting again fro1n
186 I HITLER OEMOCRAT
scratch. Gennany ,vas devoting 3.5% of her national income to defense,

whereas France was e1nploying 8% and the Soviets 9% for tl1eir war aims!
Such were tl1e real figures not only for 1933 but throughout all of 1934.
The French public had been inundated witil deliberately false affir-
1nations. Even fifty years later tl1ere is scarcely a Frenchman alive who
doesn't believe tl1at Hitler spent umpteen billions for rearmament!
The figures are there to dispose of the baloney. Against the 1,450 air-
craft tJ1at France and her satellites possessed in 1934: not a single military
aircraft in Gern1m-iy at tl1at time. Against her heavy artillery: not a single
heavy gun in tl1e Reich. Against her hundreds of tanks: none at all on the
otl1er side of tJ1e Rhine. And witll the hundreds of annored bastions of her
l\1aginot Line, tile Wall of China of tl1e 'I\ventieth Century (and not even
a fortlet at tl1at time on the western border of Gennany), France was tlle
nmnber one military power in all of Europe.
Though not ordinarily fanatical, tile British, who had just doubled
their air force, increasing it at one stroke by 820 planes, had taken to ut-
tering some decidedly Napoleonic statements. On July 31, 1934, Prime
Minister Stanley Baldwin, a solemn bourgeois witil a stiff collar and tile
eternal umbrella, had issued a proclamation wortlly of tile bulletins of
tlle G?-ande Amiee: "The English frontier is no longer at Dover but on
the Rhine"!
Hurling himself at Gennany's few mock tanks with cardboard annor
plating, Baldwin felt himself possessed of tile intrepid soul of a sans-
culott.e-an extreme French revolutionary-charging tlle Prussians at
Valmy on Sept. 20, 1792.
One might think oneself gone back to tile time of Poincare's galloping
incursions into the Ruhr in 1923!
Even Roosevelt had taken t.o playing the American Bonaparte. But it
was the Japanese first and foremost who irritated him. The Japanese had
landed on a fringe of continental Asia They were only a tenth as greedy
as the Russians, however, who had settled from Port Arthur and Darien
to tlle outskirts of Vladivostok without anyone's taking offense at it.
When the Americans wrest.ed land from the Indians, that was a glori-
ous epic where every cowboy hat was the crest of a crusader. Hollywood
studios would glorify them for a century.
The same clear conscience when the English, t.o secure their "leben-
sraum" in the Indies, tied refractory sepoys to the muzzles of their can-
nons. The same when the French settled in Algeria and at Madagascar
TERRITORIAL REUNIFICATION I . 187
and Tonkin by artillery fire.

In those cases it was always a matter of glorious wars, of the building
of wonderful empires, benevolent and enlightening! The French Empire
alone had become fifty times as large (2,500,000 square kilometers) as
metropolitan France. The British Empire: one hundred and fifty times as
vast (35 million square kilometers) as Great Britain itself (239,000 square
kilometers). The Dutch Empire: 1,900,000 square kilometers in compar-
ison with Holland's minuscule territ.ory of 33,000 square kilometers.
Even little Belgium-in those days an airplane could fly over the
whole country from one end to the other in less than an hour, nowadays
in six minutes-had taken possession of a giant empire in the heart of
Africa: 2,344,116square kilometers, which the armed conquest of Rwanda
and Burundi in the course of the First World War had supplemented. More
than thirty hectares per Belgian head!
Conquered pickaninnies on the banks of the River Zaire were gravely
taught Flemish; the Malagasy and the Kanak, that their fathers were Gauls
with big mustaches; the half-starved Hindus squatting amongst their
cows, that their Empress Queen Victoria, set up in all her bronze weight
in the great square of Calcutta, was their beloved mother!
All of them, black or yellow, were made t.o venerate one God, one
Christ, one Virgin, and the Apostles, all impeccably white. And every-
where, in Algiers as in Hanoi, horrible cathedrals were built in counterfeit
Gothic that no native would again enter, beginning with the first Sunday
after the disappearance of the colonizers.
The porcelains of the Chinese were plundered, the wooden masks and
caived ivory of the Africans, the sarcophagi of the Egyptians, the minia-
tures and carpets of the Persians, the bronze statuettes of the Tonkinese.
A future French Cabinet minister, Andre Malraux, was even sentenced
to three months in prison in Indochina for such an act, not precisely be-
cause he had stolen works of art from native subjects, but because he
had deprived the Paris museums of them! There, as in the British Mu-
seum, or the museum of Amsterdam, or of Turvuren in Belgium, evidence
of the art of twenty peoples was accumulated, often even stacked up in
the basement
In sum, civilization had been brought t.o all of them. It was splendid.
But that the beastly little Japanese, not satisfied with living sparely on
their naked rocks, should have had the presumption t.o set their dirty yel-
low feet down on a Manchurian area that was in rampant disorder (irni-
tating the Europem,s who had long since landed on tl,e coasts of China),
that action had been stigmatized as a crhne tl,roughout tl,e white world.
And no action taken to thwart tl,e depredators would be held exces-
sive: not the condemnation of tlle League of Nations, nor tl\e excomn1u-
nication of Ute League of Hun,an Rights, nor yet the weeping of the
S.'llvation Anny.
For the entire civilized world, U,ere were thus two kinds of Nazis:
those with white faces and those witl, yellow, those of Hitler and those of
tJ,e Mikado. They were pretty 1nuch the srune, both eaters of peoples.
The thne would quickly co1ne when Roosevelt would treat them ex-
actly alike and would pas.s Hiroshi.tna and Nagasaki over the grill while
providing his sardonic friend Stalin with tl,e tens of thousands of tanks
and planes that would enable hiln to destroy the Nipponese of Europe,
the Hitlerians.
A nlighty reannrunent had thus been decided on by Roosevelt with
even n1ore conviction that the United States intended to make the Pacific
Oceru1 its own private sea, a sort of Yankee Mediterranean, with both
shores strictly reseived.
"The AlneriCaI\ fleet will be pushed to the extre1ne limit of its power,"
Roosevelt had declared after the Japanese had transfonned their occupa-
tion zone into astate, Mru1chukuo, w1der the authority of a local notable,
Prince Puyi.
AJapanese dominion! What a 1nonstrous thing!
Yet what was the bey of 1\mis if not a pre-Puyi? And the sultrul of Mo-
rocco, treated as a puppet? Most of tl,e thne these 1narionettes got over-
turned or depo1ted. Who was in co1nmand in Tonkin? And in
l\fadagascar? Alld Rhodesia? And in Bengal? And what if not satellites
were the maharajas, bowing and scraping before the English? And Fuad
I, so humble in his fez beside the Nile!
Still, after all those, that a modest dominion should arise in Northern
Asia under the Japanese flag of the rising sun was plainly intolerable.
Until 1934, colonialism was excellent But once the English, Dutch,
Belgians and Ru~ians were copiously satiated, to imitate the1n inunedi-
ately became an abomination.
:he mere idea tl1at an overpopulated Gennany nlight expand a bit was
~ mtolerable prospect And the fact that tl,e little Japanese had already
tried to do so in Ma11churia demanded an exe1nplary punislunent. It
would not be long in coming. The Japanese would get it right in the face
TERlllTORIAL REUNIFICATION I 189
in 1945 in the fonn of two atomic bombs.

Roosevelt, putting aside his crutches to get on his high horse, had im-
1nediately ordered the construction of 360,000 tons of new warships. They
were going to build 2,320 airplanes in the United States!
"The idea of war is on the way," remarked Mussolini on the 24th of
August 1934, a 1nonth after Roosevelt's incendiary declaration.
Like all the others, and with still greater vigor, the Soviets had taken
the bit in their teeth.
Without breathing a word of it, they had increased the strength of their
anny in 1934 fro1n 600,000 to nearly a million men. Ten times as many as
the Reichswehr of the saine period. And that same year, they were going
to have several thousand tanks, paratroop divisions, and a big air force.
As Gen. Mikhail 1\1khachevsky, the under minister of war, declared
to the Seventh Congress of the Pan-Russian Soviets on Jan. 1, 1935, they
would 1nake use of modem techniques in such a fashion that no other
army in the world could cmnpare with them.
No country escaped the contagion. Even the Swiss decided to extend
the period of military service. Though for centuries they had forged only
inoffensive halberds for the use of the must.achioed Vatican guards, they
voted a ntilitary budget equivalent to more than a billion French francs.
After Hitler's triumph in his plebiscite of Aug. 19, 1934, the ex-Allies
were detennined to lead him barefooted to await his pardon, as Pope
Gregory VIl had den1anded of the German Emperor Henry IV beneath
the walls of Canossa.
One 1night also, in August 1934, have believed oneself gone back to the
month of August 1347, at the tin1e when the bourgeois of Calais, dressed
in their shirts and with a rope around their necks, had to come and beg
for the mercy of King of England Edward ill.
Construction of the Reichs motorway, Frankfurt am Main-Darmstadt-Mannhelm: Work
began on Sept. 231933, part of the autobahn system that Hitler and his National So-
cialist government brought into existence. These public works programs employed
workers who had been denied a job under the capitalist Weimar Republic, while also
expanding the economy of Germany by creating infrastructure that allowed German
businesses to expand. The program would serve as a model to American President
Franklin Roosevelt CREDIT: AKG-IMAGES/NEWSCOM
CHAPTER
PLEBISCITE IN THE SAARLAND
dolf Hitler stood fast to the proposals he had made to British

Minister Anthony Eden on April 16, 1934. He still desired
nothing more, despite the universal reannrunent, than to
give his country an anny of limited size. Besides, after a year
and a half of power, his essential preoccupation for the im-
mediate future was not nlilitary in nature: it aimed above all at straight-
ening out the economy of the Reich. Of the 6 million unemployed on Jan.
30, 1933, more than 4 million had been put back to work by the end of
1934. In the entire Reich there now remained only 1,781,000 jobless. But
they still had to be reabsorbed into the economy. It was almost a miracle
that in less than two years, their number had been reduced by more than
two-thirds.
Pierre Renouvin, the Sorbonne professor and ultra official historian,
had to acknowledge those figures and note their exemplary value: "That
recovery is taking place without a perceptible increase in domestic prices,
despite the devaluation of the pound sterling, and without real salaries
suffering any real squeeze." (Les Crises duXXe Siecle, Vol. II, p. 37.)
The first ribbons of the autobahns were running across the fields and
mountains. 'l\vo thousand factories had been renovated; and leave time
had been created, including vacations for workers. More than 100,000
new houses already provided decent housing for the working man, who
had been brought to a natural status of social justice and dignity.
Prof. Renouvin, gloomy-eyed, could but agree: "On the whole," he
wrote, "tl1e recovery is incontestable." (Ibid.) .

Man was no longer the slave of 1noney. The 1noney that allowed Hitler
to inaugurate tl1e greatest econonlic renaissance of Europe, was no
longer due to the banks, nor to tl1e super capitalist bigwigs. Nor had it
been obtained by sucking 1uoney fro1n tl1e public in the form of truces that
were every year n1ore crushing. The billions involved in the economic
and social reconstruction of tl1e Reich were put up by tl1e people them-
selves, by subscribing of tl1eir own free will to short-term bonds paying
an honest interest-instead of sinking into tl1e abyss of incomprehensible
deficits of bloodsucker states.
The Gennan people would tl1us spontaneously provide Hitler witl1
twelve billion marks, an enormous reserve fund, larger than the military
budget of France, then the most expensive in the world.
Labor was no longer at the mercy of the dictatorship of money; it was
again becoming an effective and creative real force worthy of respect
That was tl1e Hitler revolution: it organized the material in the exaltation
of the individual who created. Labor-whether of hand or head-was the
greatness and the honor of the national community.
Hitler also thought-of course!-of the ingathering and of the expan-
sion of his people.
He would not go and conquer land and bread in the east by making
speeches, but by forging a new army, ultramodern and oriented in but
one direction: the East, which, liberated and regenerated, would consti·
tute for Western Europe an impassable protection rather than a risk.
Now at the end of 1934, however, this conception of the future r~
mained for Hitler a projection of distant date.
The armed forces of the Reich were still proportionately insignificant,
less than half tllat of a neighboring country like Czechoslovakia that had
only a sixth as many people as the Reich.
If the enemies of Hitler, instead of setting up a deafening racket and
seeking ever greater and more ruinous rearmament, had simply utilized
the military forces they possessed, they could have overturned Hitler in
just a few weeks; for though he had the great masses of the people behind
him as in no other country, he still had but a handful of poorly armed sol•
diers to defend the national and social gains of two years of effort.
"On looking back," Wmston Churchill, king of the warmongers, frankly
admitted, "I am astonished at all tlle time tllat was granted us." (Wmston
Churchill,L'OrageApproche, p.117.)
PLEDISCITE lN THE SAARLAND I 193
If super armed France had ever had the guts, then she'd have t.aken
her enemy at the end of her bayonets. She was hopping mad, but she was
hopping in place. Well, it was necessary to go on the attack, or, if not, to
quit screaming and opposing everything and begin discussing, weighing
and balancing interests.
Every so often an Englishman who had remained reasonable asked
himself the question under his breath.
Sir Eric Phipps, the ambassador of Great Britain in Berlin, wrote: "We
cannot regard Hitler simply as the author ofMein Kampf; and we cannot
allow ourselves to ignore him. Would it not then be preferable to come to
teffllS with this man, who is endowed with such a fearful dynamism? If
he pledged his word, his signature would be for all Gennany a commit-
ment more powerful than the signature of any other Gennan in the past."
(Fest, op. cit., Vol. II, p. 130.)
Instead of opposing the Gennans, the English and the French might
together with them have fonned a team without equal in the world-com-
plementing each other economicallY, each having their own field ofaction
in confonnity with their genius and their nee~ither beyond the seas
or in the complementary lands of Eastern Europe delivered from the
Communist tyranny.
"It is in the interest of all," Hitler used to saY, "that the problems of the
present be resolved in a reasonable and peaceful manner."
One last chance was going to be offered: the plebiscite of the Saar, in
January of 1935.
That ancient German territory, occupied by the French since 1918,
was called upon, as ordered by the 'Ireaty of Versailles, to decide its des-
tiny by means of a plebiscite.
With a bit of good will, that plebiscite might perfectly well have been
avoided and have been the occasion of a friendly settlement that could
have brought the two countries together instead of seeing them in one
more confrontation. Hitler had desired that negotiation. He had offered
it to France months since.
Paris thought it preferable to face the electoral trial, convinced that
her Gennan rival would suffer a humiliating defeat.
And so the Gennans and the French were going to face each other
electorally before the people of the Saar.
Vain duel! The plebiscite would simply be one more milestone leading
to the future European civil war.
J9,i I IIITLEH DEMOCRAT
Hitler had C)..l>lained his position with great clruity:

"\Ve have the feeling, just like otller peoples, tl1at we are at a tunling
point in history. All of us, the vanquished of yesterday and the victors
alike, have the intimate conviction tlmt so1netl1ing has gone wrong. And
in particular tllat 1nen have abandoned reason. All peoples sense it very
strongly: a new order n1ust be established on tllis continent where our
peoples are forced to press too tightly against one another in a too-exigu-
ous space." (Fest, Hitle1; Vol. II, p. 132.)
Continually repeating tl1e versicles of tl1e psaltn of Versailles while ob-
stinately de1nanding tl1at tl1ey be earned out word for word would not
settle anything:
"They are nlistaken," Hitler predicted, "who believe tilat tl1e word of
Versailles can open tile door to a new order. That would not be its foun-
dation stone, but rather its ton1bstone." (Ibid.)
Now, one of the last hnpositions of tl1e Versailles Treaty-tl1e occupa-
tion and exploitation of the riches of the Saar, which had been continued
for tl1e benefit of France for 15 years-was coming to an end.
The plebiscite, organized and controlled by the League of Nations
and the fonner Allies, was going to make known whether tl1e inhabi~
tants of tl1e Saar wished to maintain the pro-French status, 111odify it,
or elilnmate it.
In 1919, victorious France had aspired to appropriate tile Saar along
with all the rest of tile German territocy west of tl1e Rhine.
The political men of France were tenacious. They had sharpened teetil
and a pletilora of words. The Saar provmce had tempted the1n 1nost es-
pecially because it was economically the perlect co1nplement to Alsace-
Lorraine, which had come under their power agam m November of 1918.
In the course of the two previous centuries, tile French had watered
tileir horses in tl1e Elbe, the Vistula, and tile Moscow, as well as in the
Danube, the 'Ilber, the Tagus and the Guadalquivir.
They had even pitched camp on the banks of the Nile. If Napoleon did
not arrive at the Ganges, it was because he had run into a few little annoy-
ances on the way.
France had tilerefore ridden across the Saar as well as everywhere
else. On several occasions. But brief occasions. Under tJ1e empire. Under
the French revolution. Even, one time or another, under tJ1e kings. '111e
town of Saarlouis had been founded by Louis XIV on land unquestionably
Gennanic, and fortified by Sebastian Le Prestre de Vauban (1633-1707).
PLEBISCITE IN THE SAARLAND I 195
The French used to explain witl1 pride that a large portrait of the Sun
King had even been found at the town hall of Saarbruecken. It was true.
It had been discovered, all covered with dust and spider webs, in the
deptl1s of a forgotten attic.
Georges Clemenceau, old "Father Victory," with great shaggy eye-
brows and wearing his lopsided blue cap, had explained with vehemence
to the preparatory co1nmission of the Treaty of Versailles that the Saar
was a living, breathing piece of old France:
"The great majority of the inhabitants of the Saar are of French origin.
Those who are not are Frenchmen in their hearts."
Delegate Andre Tardieu, a future prime 1ninister, had gone even fur-
tl1er, throwing out figures: 150,000 Saar voters were waiting atremble for
the hour of participation in the liberating elections.
"Saarbruecken," Tardieu exclaimed, "would certainly elect a French
deputy!"
The English Lloyd George had not been convinced. He himselfjudged
it n1ore prudent to wait a few years rather than huny the elections. After
a certain time period, they could ask the local voters to decide.
Soft spoken, he asked Clemenceau, who was pawing the ground,
why there was so 1nuch haste: "Since you are so sure of the sympathy
of the Saarlanders, what do you have to lose by waiting? They will be
all the 1nore eager to opt for France if none of them can say they forced
his hand."
By waiting, France had been given the advantage of occupying the
entire province with her troops, and to dispose as she would of its coal-
mining potential. More than 70% of the region was covered with coal
pits, coking plants and electric power plants. The coal production was
fabulous: 20 million tons with which to feed the entire Alsace and Lor-
raine basins.
With Clemenceau still growling, he was promised that he would in any
case be 1nade a gift of the mines. Whatever the result of a plebiscite one
day, tl1ey would re1nain French. Clemenceau's blackmail had succeeded.
By asking for too 1nuch he had obtained much. In the meantime, he would
veritably set up cainp in the place, free to engineer things politically as he
saw fit
That is how tl1e bargain was struck at Versailles: France would occupy
tile entire Saar and exploit tl1e resources as she pleased. She would have
fifteen years ahead of her to prepare a plebiscite without any intederence
or supervision by tl1e Gennan state.

The French n1ade no bones about the occupation. TI1ousands of Ger-
man officials who might have been able to carry on a certain national in-
fluence were cavalierly turned out France owned everything and could
apply whatever pre.$ure was required, militarily, socially and financially.
While tl1e rest of Gennany had been engulfed in an overwhelming cri-
sis, with millions of unen1ployed, the French administration of tl1e rich
coal mines of the Saar was able to pay its miners the highest wages in
Europe. (J.B. Duroselle, Histoire diplmnatique, p. 175.) If only to secure
his bread, the worker of the Saar ought to have desired that the system
which was materially much more reassuring for him be maintained.
Everything concurred to ensure a French solution of the future
plebiscite: the economic advantages, altogether more favorable than in
the crisis-ridden Reich; and custom-free trade with the West
Overwhelming French propaganda every day highlighted the damage
to ensue from the alternative solution: passage into the clutches of fright-
ful tyranny! People crammed into concentration camps by Hitler! The Is-
raelites dispossessed and separated from each other!
"French officials," historian Benoist-Mechin has recalled, "have ad-
ministered the region. Customs duties have been all but abolished on tl1e
Franco-Saar border, so that all the wealth of the region has flowed out to
the Lorraine, bringing an appreciable stimulus to our industry.
"Finally, French propaganda has had free rein. Day after day the news-
papers of Paris and from abroad have had every latitude to enlighten
minds about the sinister antecedents of the Hitler regime. Nothing has
been left in shadow: not the persecution of tlle Jews, not the concentra-
tion camps, not the revolt of the SA, not the shackles put on the freedo1n
of expression. The leader of the Third Reich is openly accused of muz-
zling the opposition, of faking his plebiscites, and of subjecting the coun-
try to a reign of terror." (Benoist-Mechin, Histoire de l'Armee Allemande,
pp. 256f.)
"There is a great deal at stake. And France, well aware of it, is doing
her best to have all the trumps on her side. The pro-Germany move-
ments are dissolved, and anti-Nazi emigrants are charged with making
the rounds of meetings not only in Saarbriicken but in all the smallest
villages to explain to people what they are letting themselves in for if
they vote for Berlin.,, (Ibid.) France was playing double or nothing.
"If France wins, she will not only obtain unquestionable economic ad-
PLEBISCITE INTHESAARLAND I 197
vant.ages: the moral advantages will be even bigger. Not only will
Cle1nenceau's affmnations be confinned, but the vote will demonstrate
that de1nocratic France exercises a greater attraction on men's minds
titan Hitler totalitarianism." (Ibid.)
It was the greatest possible opportunity for the French to show the
world that the Germans themselves loathed Hitler:
"Here," Benoist-Mechin writes in conclusion, "the people of a tenitocy
that is not under their control and where their information comes to
1
them only via the radio, are going to be called upon to say whether they
prefer to be free, to be connected with France, or to go back to the bosom
of the Reich. Who does not see that their choice will be equivalent to a
verdict, and that it is not Germany but the Hitler regime that will be on
trial?" (Ibid.) The fight was all the easier to conduct inasmuch as up to
then tl1e National Socialists of the Saar, closely watched, had not been
able to cany on any effective propaganda: in the regional elections of 13
March 1932, before the accession of Hitler to power, they had obtained
only 2 seats out of 30.
And as for Hitler himself, what was his position in this matter of the
Saar? Contracy to evecything one might believe, it was not bellicose in
the slightest. Essentially it was directed at conciliation. In his view, the
Saar was the stake which, instead of pitting France and Germany against
each other, could offer them grounds for reconciliation.
Each of them, to be sure, if stubborn, could make a maximum effort
in the certainty of victocy. But who was really sure of obtaining it? And
what would victocy serve if it angered tl1e loser even more?
A plebiscite could only lead to dangerous confrontations and nib sen-
sitivities raw. It would be a hundred times more favorable and profitable
to find arrangements guaranteeing the French that they would maintain
material profits in tl1e Saar even if they lost the territory.
As early as 1933, Hitler had proposed entering into negotiations over
the Saar directed at seeking an ainicable arrangement.
"Hitler," wrote Sorbonne professor J.B. Duroselle in these exact
words, "asked the French government in vain to waive the plebiscite (No-
vember, 1933)." (Op. cit., p.176.)
•
l)ie $aav ist fr~i.

,.~
$;tit
- d~m 3:iibttttt !
-- ...... ....
.-
, . ; ,,,.,. •1 : 1 1
After the people of the Saar voted in 1935 to reject the Treaty of Versailles and liberate
themselves from France and Britain, German troops-including this SA unit-entered
its capital, Saarbrucken, and returned the Saarland to Germany. AKG•IMAGESINEWSCOM
CHAPTER
THE SAARlAND VOTES TO JOIN GERMANY
n 1934 .the date for the plebiscite in the Saar was drawing near.
Hitler renewed his proposal most energetically, and with this end
in view extended an invitation to meet with him to French Ambas-
sador Andre Frarn;ois-Poncet, whose sly maneuvers he dreaded
while appreciating his intelligence and sense of diplomacy. He of-
fered to forestall a conflict, if only a psychological one, by concluding an
accord by mutual agreement that would be favorable to both parties.
Personally, he was sure of gaining the victory-and events proved
him right-but to avoid a conflict he was disposed to allow France-
even after she had gone from the Saar territory militarily and politi-
cally-to eitjoy the same material advantages she had reaped while in
control of the region.
Hitler's official offer could not have been more clear: the Saar would
become Gennan again, but an economic treaty would pennit French in-
dustry to have the benefit of the resources of the Saar wtder the same
conditions as fonnerly. (Benoist-Mechin, op. cit., p. 257.)
That proposal ought to have made them think. That way at least
France did not risk losing everything. She was guaranteed very consider-
able material profits by the agreement.
In the case of a defeat she could be frustrated complete]y.
This goodwill gesture of Hitler's provoked just the opposite, an out-
burst of intransigence: as the French government saw it, if Hitler was
ready to cast aside a considerable material benefit in that fashion, it was
200 I IIITI.EH DEMOCRAT
because he felt he wilS going to be beaten when the tune crune for voting.
At Paris they said: "Would Hitler give up the plebiscite if he were sure
of ,vinning"? So now, less than ever is tl1is tl1e tilne to grru1t hhn conces-
sions." (Benoist-~{echin, op. cit., p. 257.)
Forty days before t11e vote on the League of Nations proposal, Hitler
one last tiine rene,ved in writing his offer to pay France, in the event tl1e
plebiscite went against her, a financial co1npensation of 900 nlillion francs
as a quid pro quo for tl1e Saar benefits she would lose.
France ,vas absolutely sure of herself. Sure at least tl1at if a majority
of the Saar voters did not choose to beco1ne definitively French, at worst
they would declare for a status quo such as the Saar Marxists recom-
n1ended. And tl1at fonn of discreet dependency would maintain and even
ensure continuity of tl1e past that had been so very lucrative for France.
In tl1at certail1ty, Paris refused any agreement whatsoever and de-
1nanded tl1ey vote.
To 1naintain her position by force and to ftighten possible pro-Gennan
voters, France n1assed sizable contingents of troops on the Franco-Saar
border. "TI1e situation," Benoist-Mechin wrote, "is as tense as on the eve
oftl1e occupation of Ute Ruhr." (Ibid.)
Hitler took a radically opposite countenneasure. He forbade all public
activity of tl1e SA and the SS witllin forty kilo1neters of the Saar border
with Germany. National Socialists could not even wear tl1eir party uni-
fonus witllin this large area of the Reich.
As for Hitler personally, he had been bluntly forbidden by the occupy-
ing power to speak in Saar territory. He, tl1e chancellor of the Reich, could
not enter a tenitory of tl1e Reich.
He did not protest. Not once during the entire plebiscite campaign
,vould he hold a single meeting with his 812,000 fellow citizens of the
Saar-an enonnous advantage for his opponents, for everyone kne,v
Hitler's words were irresistible.
In this way, it was said, the voters of the Saar would not be in danger
of being turned aside from a solution favorable to France or to the sta-
tus quo.
No measure taken to avoid a "Gennan" vote would be considered ex-
cessive. The refugees of the extreme left would be given free rein.
In Paris, the leader of the French socialists, the Jew Leon Blunt,
echoed them frenetically: "TI1e workers will rise to resist tlte Hitler ag-
gres.5ion." (Churchill, L'Orage approche, p. 131.)
THE SAARLAND VOTES TO JOIN GERMANY I 201
On five occasions the French authorities would order the anned

forces to charge and disperse public demonstrations favoring union with
tl1e Reich.
"The Saar," Benoist-Mecl1in again writes, "has become a veritable
powder keg; a spark would be enough to make it explode."
The 1nilitary occupation was transformed into a multinational deploy-
ment British and Italian troops had been sent to join the French troops.
TI1e streets of the Saar were lined with Scottish soldiers dressed in kilts,
n1arching to tl1e cadence of their bagpipes; of heavily anned French, pro-
vided even witil tanks; of swarthy Italians with lofty plumes! A strange
"democratic" plebiscite, under tile round eye of rifles and cannon!
Civil and military authority was in the hands of the foreigner. This gov-
enunent of the Saarlanders by non-Saarlanders was presided over by a
Frenclunan.
The keenest representatives of tile anti-German press of Paris had
been sent running to the rescue.
111ey would even be seen taking part in socialist meetings.
111e special correspondent of L'Oeuvre recounts: "I accept, and come
evening I acco1npany these courageous men into a whole series of little
villages where, on modest platforms, insignia of the Front de la Liberte
and the red flag witil white darts are intermingled with the flag of the Saar.
"Ovations are given me a few tilnes at some of the meetings; my few
encouraging sentences in bad German brought forth the Marseillaise
sung awkwardly witl1 a German accent." (G. Tabouis, op. cit., p. 225.)
One can ilnagine tJ1e spectacle!
Thus, supported by the anti-Hitler turncoats and by the pen holders of
Paris, the Marxists of Saarbruecken felt sure of their affair:
"They count on at least 40% of the votes," Max Braun, the Socialist
leader, told the French press. A part of the Saar at the very least will re-
main independent as at present And that will be a terrible blow to Hitler!"
"The friends of tl1e Gennan front may tear up our posters all tile time,"
Conununist Fritz Pfordt stated, "but, believe me, we have solid and seri-
ous troops." (G. Tabouis, pp. 227f.)
Nevertheless, impelled by professional curiosity, our intrepid Parisian
journalists had a hankering to go and see how tl1e partisans of Hitler Ger-
many were doing-a lost cause in advance, to be sure!
But strangely, though they tl1emselves are politely received, the re-
ception given by the crowd to the non-Marxist orators is not what the big
shot Frenchjoun1alists e:\-pected.

"\Ve co1ue into a very snmll town where inunense spotlights illuminate
tbe facade of a building witJ1 white coltunns decorated with long garlands
of laurel and a profusion of Nazi flags. We go in. Witl1 1nakeshift means,
the staging is grandiose. TI1e hall, which we sense to be vast, is dark. The
projectors floodlight a large stage decorated with a sea of Nazi flags sur-
rounding a gigantic portrait of tlte Fuehrer and the Gennan eagle." (Ibid.)
TI1e orators-insolent fellows-proclaim their conviction of victory.
"Between each oftllese affinnations, tlte dark unseen audience is felt
to be n1oving. One senses an immense fervor seizing these invisible be-
ings. Patriotic songs alternate witll "Heil Hitlers." I feel myself crushed....
In tlle bus on tlle way back, my Gennan colleagues become sarcastic: 'Eh
bum, Madame Tabouis, are you still going to write that the Front de la
Liberte will have 4006 of tlle votes, as you did this morning!?" (Ibid.)
"Why not?" she dryly replies. (Ibid.)
Somewhat acidulous, our special correspondent of tile Paris left-wing
p~.
But who laughs last, laughs best, she says to herself.
The big day arrived.
It was Sunday, the 13th of January, 1935.
They were zealous to the point of setting a foreigner instead of a Saar-
lander at the head of each polling place. Thus it was under the eye of a
non-Saarlander that the Saar was going to make its pronouncement
The French journalists ran from street to street, from polling office to
polling office.
From the start, they would know astonishing disappointments. The
propaganda was not very modem; it was even rather feeble:
"We come across a horse-drawn vehicle, an old 1900 coupe with a
team of two big horses that an old coachman wearing a tall black hat is
conducting in a dignified manner. The driver says t.o us: it is one of the car-
riages of the domanial mines of the Saar that carries an elector. I think it
really symbolizes French policy and propaganda, so slow and old-fash-
ioned." (Ibid.) Such regrettable nonchalance might minimize tile impor-
tance of the success, but of the latter in any event there was not tl1e
slightest doubt CiOunting of the vote took place the next day. Ye gods,
what a catastrophe!
"A5 early as nine o'clock," our intrepid journalist notes, "tile bulletins
of the 'GenTlan Front' are just beginning to come in when Nazi flagg ap-
pear one after another in the windows of the town. Around four o'clock
in the afternoon, it beco1nes evident that the 'Gennan Front' is carrying
9006 of the vote. Only 9% for the Front de la Liberte. Not even one percent
for France!
TI1e church bells immediately begin to ring, and the town is now just
a sea of flag.5! In the streets which are resounding with Hitlerian hymns,
tile Nazis are distributing postcards with a wide black border all around:
'Death of Mr. Status Quo' and underneath: 'The family of Messrs. Max
Braun, Fritz Pfordt'
"In the street, a kind of infernal exhilaration has taken possession of
the population. An enonnous torchlight tattoo, a veritable river of fire,
n1arches by to the sound of fifes and drums and the national hymns. One
has the impression that an immense rapture has seized the entire Saar
and that Hitler is God." (Ibid.)
TI1e Brauns (socialists) and Pfordts (Communists), before scuttling
off to France, pick up their papers at the union house.
"I make my way there very moved," writes the French journalist I
congratulate them on their courage. A tragic meeting of the vanquished!"
"The French evidently have nothing more to say. No one wants to
cany my valise to the station. But a foreign journalist assists me. The two
of us, jostled by a mob in ecstasy, arrive at the station somehow or other.
And the train starts slowly for France, while for a long time yet I hear 'the
Saar is Gennan' and the 'Heil Hitlers'." (Ibid.)
The French press, which claimed to be so well infonned, and the Paris
politicians so absolute in tl1eir judgrnents: would they now at least, after
the disaster of the Saar, draw any intelligent conclusions from the event?
The plebiscite had just given all of them a striking lesson: in politics
it is no use force-feeding the public with lies; they quickly develop indi-
gestion.
Until the 13th ofJanuary 1935, it had been all the rage after evecy elec-
tion or plebiscite in Hitler Gennany right away to shout: "It's a scam! The
results have been faked!"
Here, before evecyone's eyes, the proof could not have been more
convincing. Evecyone had to acknowledge it: they had voted in a region
that was totally controlled by non-Gennans. The government of the area
had been in the hands offoreigners. They had n1oney and blaclanail at
their disposal: the laboring masses of the Saar-8006 of the population-
were totally dependent upon the salaries that the domanial mines allot-
ted the1n. Foreign troops and their tanks lined tl1e streets.
Hitler, chancellor though he was of tl1e whole of Gennan territory, had
not been able to enter tl1e Saar, a Gennan province, even once. Not a sin-
gle voter could have been affected by his personal charisma. Even tlle
polling places had been presided over and supervised by foreigners.
Not tl1e slightest pressure by Hitler was possible!
Well, tlten, what had happened? The Germans of tl1e Saar, under
French autltority, w1der Franco-Anglo-Italian milit.acy occupation, under
tlte scn1tiny tllroughout the voting day of a foreigner presiding over the
proceeding.s, had voted exactly like the Germans inside Germany. The
figures were the same: 90%!
Everything should have urged the Saar voters to hesitate: their mate-
rial interests, as well as the prospect of reentering a Reich that had only
just raised itself out of the ruins; the fear, as part of greater Gennany, of
running into furtl1er international complications, of being subject to the
power of that Hitler who had constantly been painted as the worst of
monst.ers. They had voted: and the entire Saar had flung itself into tlle
arms of the monst.er!
There were not even any loopholes: not only had Hitler carried 9<m of
the votes; the defeat ofllis adversaries complet.ely swpassed what anyone
could have imagined.
The Marxist opposition, in a fundamentally working class area, where
Socialists and Communists had nonnally been able to win far more than
an absolut.e majoritY, had obtained only 8.8% of the vote, despite the fact
tllat they had only advocated a timid "status quo." They had not even won
over a tenth of the voters. That was not a defeat; the Marxists had been
swept away by Hitler's broom.
As for the French, their rout was scarcely believable. They had pro-
claimed that fifty thousand Saarlanders at least were fiercely French and
would surely elect a French deputy in the event of elections. And now
look! After fifteen years of power and propaganda, here was the result:
out of 860,000 Saarlanders, only 2,124 and not one more had voted for
union with France.
"In Paris, where everyone was confident of success, the results of the
balloting are a t.enible disappointment," observes Benoist-Mechin. "What
happened to tlle 150,000 French Saarlanders Clemenceau alluded to?"
(op. cit., vol. III, p. 258.)
One cannot conceive of a more absolute debacle. Despite the fact that
THE SAAR LAND VOTES TO JOfN GERMANY I 205
2hriidt %Ul1l\hlerland!
•sack to the fatherland!," announces this poster, distributed by the National Socialists
in the Saar just prior to the plebiscite in which 91% of the population voted to reunite
with Germany. Only about half a percent of the population voted for union with France,
while about 9% voted for continuing British-French rule as an autonomous territory
under the League of Nations.
everything possible had been done to thwart him, that confounded Hitler
had obtained 220 times as many votes as the French! "In Berlin," Benoist-
Mechin is obliged to note, "the decision of the Saar evokes an indescrib-
able enthusiasm. For hows, crowds file past beneath the balcony of the
Chancellery cheering the Fuehrer." (Ibid.)
It was tl1e conclusive demonstration-agreeable or not-that the Ger-
man people were for Hitler whether they were in an unfree part of the
Reich or in the free part itself, and that contrary to what had been noisily
trumpeted in the world press, the earlier plebiscites in Germany proper
had been absolutely correc~ inasmuch as in the Saar, said to be French,
give or take, they had been exactly the same.
The most elementary ethics ought to have led the official historians to
record the evidence honestly. But as always, while pretending objectivity,
they hastened to coltjure away the facts.
That was nothing new. Hitler had put more than four million unem-
ployed back to work. It was a forrnidable accomplishrnen~ unique in Eu-
rope: silence! Comment on it would have been embarrassing.
The same abstention with respect to the Saar. Only Churchill, half one
thing and half anotlle1; dared a more-o11.less con-ect interpretation of the

Saar election.
"Tile plebiscite," he wrote, "took place on Jan. 13, 1935 under interna-
tional supe1vision, including an English bligade, and that little enclave,
which represented along witll Danzig the only tenitory e1nbodying the
sovereignty of the League of Nations, asked by a vote of 90.03% that it be
retun1ed to Gennany. Titis moral trimnph of National Socialis1n, altllough
it is only tlle outc01ne of a nom1al and inevitable evolution, augments
Hitler's prestige; and, thanks to that candid experilnent, his authority
could e1nerge as the expression of the will of the Gem1an people."
(Churchill, L'Orage approche, p. 109.)
The French press took care above all not to make the slightest refer-
ence to tl1e precise coincidence established by the plebiscites within and
outside of tlle Reich. It quickly eliminated the Saar vote and its embarrass-
ing result fron1 its news columns. It was allnost as if it had never existed.
TIle French historian Thillier devoted only a fowth of a page to it.; his
con1patriot Brissaud, two-tlurds of a page; tlle Sorbonne professor, Re-
nouvin, one page; his colleague J.B. Duroselle, two and a half pages out
of 871.
French historian Benoist-Mechin was the only one of tlle lot who
would venture to give, in his Histmy ofthe GennanArmy, a brief but ob-
jective and honest commentary:
"The figures of tl1e plebiscite held under international supe1vision are
identical to those of tlle plebiscites previously carried out inside Ger-
many. That is surely proof that it was not faked. But beyond tllat: the re-
turn of tlle Saar is an indication fraught with significance. The attraction
of tl1e Reich has been revealed to be stronger tllan all the adverse prop-
aganda. The moment a German population separated from the Reich by
a decision of the victors was able to express itself freely, it manifested its
will to rejoin its original homeland. That is a lesson Berlin will not forget."
(op. cit., vol. m. p. 258.)
But one tllat all the others will forget!
The people, in 1935, noses buried in their newspapers, could know
only what representatives of the media, often for hire, wanted them to
know-distorting, witllholding, or blowing up tlle facts to please or dis-
please: an illustration, among a hundred others, of tlle can1ouflage and
systematic fakery that were the rule before the Second World War.
Hitler, on tlle night of this plebiscite, might well have been noisily ex-
ultant, like the Gennan people. Instead, his reaction was that of a states-
man who looks beyond a personal satisfaction. Having won, he was able
to allow hi.tnself a 1nagnanimous gesture, and he did so. He at once an-
nounced that he would ever remain ready to respect French int.erests in
the Saar, that he had no wish to weaken France in any way, above all not
in a way affecting her territorial integrity.
How? He pledged his word in advance to abandon any claim to the
sacrosanct Alsace-Lorraine, which was Gennan before 1918, lost at Ver-
sailles in 1919, and a source of incessant brawls between France and Ger-
many for two centuries.
Despite his close ties to the official system, Prof. Renouvin of the Sor-
bonne had reproduced the text of that offer made by Hitler on the day
after the plebiscite:
"That the plebiscite went off without any untoward incident is a favor-
able sign. A decisive step has been taken on the path of reconciliation be-
tween our peoples. From this time forward, Gennany will make no
further territorial demands on France of any kind." (Renouvin, Les crises
du, Vingtieme siecle, vol. II, p. 67.)
With head bowed, Hitler would solenmly repeat that offer on the first
of March 1935.
He had made an identical offer to Italy several years before with re-
gard to Trentino that had been respected by both sides.
In the same fashion he was offering an olive branch to France. The
gesture cost him a good deal. Alsace-Lorraine was dear to the Gennan
people, but Hitler was a realist. His great plan for expansion, the only one
worthwhile, was to the East. To 3$Ufe himself one day of five hundred
thousand to a million square kilometers of land, he was prepared to re-
nounce forever, however bitter, a stump of Gennan tenitory to the west
of the Reich-Alsace-Lorraine-as he had given up another piece of Ger-
man t.erritory to the Italians to the south of the Brenner P3$.
Adolf Hitler reorganized the German Navy as the Kriegsmarine in 1935, part of the
general rearmament of Germany. Hitler had envisioned a navy centered around four
aircraft carrier battlegroups, but was forced to shelve those plans when war broke out.
Here he is present during a demonstration of Germany Naval artillery in Kiel in 1935.
AKG-IMAGE~EWSCOM
CHAPTER
THE ANGlO-GERMAN NAVAl TREATY
ennany, Hitler declared before the 500 deputies of
''
ff
the Reichstag, "solemnly renotmces all claim to Al-

sace-Lorraine. After the return of the Saar, the
Franco-Gennan border can be considered definitely
fixed. Prof. Jean-Baptiste Duroselle of the Sor-
ff
bonne could not completely erase this speech. The few lines he did pub-
lish in his Histoire Diplomatique are edifying:
"We hope tl1e return of tlle Saar to the Reich will once and for all ame-
liorate relations between France and Gennany. Just as we wish for peace,
we think tl1e great neighboring people, too, are prepared to seek peace.
We hope we shalljoin hands in this common endeavor tllat will ensure tl1e
security of Europe." (HistoireDiplomatique de 1919 anosjo-u,rs, p.179.)
But who, at Paris, would take any notice of this historic offer?
After her defeat in tlle Saar and notwitllstanding Hitler's conciliatory
words, France persisted in wrapping herself in proud silence.
"France," Benoist-Mechin remarks, "refuses to resmne negotiations
on tllat basis. She remains faithful to the status qua and to collective se-
curity, without realizing, as Lord 'fyrell will say, 'that she is wearing
mourning for a shadow'." (op. cit., vol. m, p. 262)
France had seen descending on her some tl1ousands of Marxists and
Israelites who, on tl1e day following the plebiscite, had skedaddled out of
the Saar. She had received them without wanntll. They were a nuisance
and little to be trusted. The refugees themselves were astonished and ir-
210 I HlTLEH DEMOCRAT
ritated to be so ill received. Many would find the1nselves, in May 1940, in

the very harsh French concentration crunps (seldom mentioned in lat.er
years) into which the refugees from Gem1any, men, women and children,
were cranuned by tl1e tens of tl1ousands in tl1e utJnost privation.
The official reply of tl1e French govermnent to Hitler would be given
in a sensational tun1 of events: on tl1e first of March, 1935, the quondam
pri1ue n1inister, M. Pierre Etienne Flanclin, asked tl1e French Chamber of
Deputies to enact legislation tl1at would increase tl1e tenn of military seiv-
ice to two years. It was adopted by a majority of tl1e French deputies on
ifarch 16, 1935.
Hitler could not allow himself to be tllus affronted. Since his peaceful
overtures ,vere so churlishly refused, he responded tit for tat: on the same
16th of March, he had the Council of Ministers of the Reich approve a
"law for the rebuilding of the Reichswehr."
No notice whatsoever had been taken of his repeated offers of recon-
ciliation. The British, the French, the Poles, the Czechs were all increasing
their anned forces. Against whom, if not against himself?
The inevitable Gemtan response would be tllat law which set up a real
German anny once again. It would no longer be limited to the miserable
contingent of 100,000 men imposed by Versailles, but would become a
half a million soldiers strong.
The text was short, three little paragraphs: "Art. 1. Service in the
Wehnnacht is on a basis of compulsory military service; Art. 2. The Ger-
man anny, in time of peace, comprises 12 anny corps, 36 divisions; Art.
3. Complementary legislation regulating the compulsory military service
will be submitted to the Cabinet in the near future by tlle Minister of the
Reichswehr." (Reichsgesetzblatt [O.tficiaJ,JournalJ, 1935, vol. I, p. 375.)
The Treaty of Versailles, hitherto many times flouted by its own signa-
tories, now burst into pieces.
The indignation, Hitler knew, would be tremendous.
But he lacked neither flair nor astuteness. He had told himself that
only by dividing his adversaries would he take the sting out of their reac·
tion. The British might have-and did have-interests that were some-
times different than those of the French. On the ocean for example.
Since they forced him to it, why should Hitler not play the game of
these opposing interests?
Egoists by inclination, the British, he was sure, would not fail to jump
with both feet at any possibility he offered them of guaranteeing their
THE ANGLO-GERMAN NAVAL TREATY I 211
maritime superiority. Throughout their entire history, that had been their
preferred objective.
In great secrecy Hitler was going to put them to the t.est .
The negotiations proposed by Hitler would be conduct.ed in London
without the lmowledge of France. The latter would not learn of their con-
clusion until the 18th of June, 1935, a most symbolic date that marked
the anniversary of the victory won on June 18, 1816 by the English and the
Prussiansjoined as brothers in arms to destroy Napoleon at Waterloo.
It was on that anniversary day that the Anglo-German naval treaty
would be signed behind Paris's back
A good many Britishers, in 1936, were not yet anti-German. Besides,
they had always had an aversion to being anti-anything. They were pro-
British. For centuries their foreign policy derived its inspiration from tak-
ing that fundamental position. In Europe, they can just as well be
pro-German as anti-German, pro-French as anti-French. A European
country becomes strong? They are against it It becomes weak? They are
for it!
In order not to overshadow them, Europe should be a complex of
countries in which they all counterbalance each other downward. It is
only insofar as nothing brings the continental forces into alliance that
Great Britain feels herself secure from any rival, whether a threat or
merely a nuisance.
Churchill, who although half American was the archetypal British bull-
dog, had even then said it in definitive terms: "For 400 years, England's
policy has been to oppose the strongest of the continental powers . . . It
didn't matter to her who this power was; it was sufficient that it appeared
to seek dominance.... Let us hence not fear the accusation of being pro-
French or anti-German. If the circumstances were to change, we should
be pro-German and anti-French ... The question to be asked today is that
of Imowing which is the strongest European power." (Jacques Chastenet:
Winsron Churchill et l'Angleterre duXXeme siede, pp. 296f.)
Since Joan of Arc and Philip II, every Briton has surely canied that
axiom before him like a shield. Deaf is he who hears it not; blind, who
sees it not
At the beginning of 1936 Germany was only at the beginning of her re-
covery. She was not neariy so strong as France, and since the latter's ven-
ture into the Ruhr, England feared a continental hegemony.
In 1936, therefore, it appeared highly desirable to all normal English-
212 I l llTI.EH DEMOCH AT
llll~n that the United Kingd01n should te1nporarily reinforce the Genuan
counte11>0ise in order to Unlit any French expansionis1n in Europe.
"\\That they would like," a French acadenlician writes, "is that those
clainlS which seen, legitilnate-they are thinking notably of the Danzig
conidor-be given inunediate satisfaction, witl1out waiting for it to be
taken by force.... Satisfying tl1ejust glievances of the vanquished should
precede tlte disannrunent of the victors ... It is infuutely better to raise
the question of a partial revision of tl1e tenito1ial clauses of tl1e Versailles
'lreaty. But it nmst be done calmly, in an atn,osphere of serenity, and while
the victorious natiotlS still possess a superiority of annainents." (Jacques
Chastenet, op. cit., p. 261.)
At botto1n, Churchill was not and never had been Hitler's enemy when
it co1nes to tl1at. If Hitler had been English instead of being German, he
,vould have been enchanted. TI1e only thing he held against him was his
not being British. But when Hitler had the bad idea of setting up his chan-
cellorship in Berlin itlStead of in London, he was auto1natically due
sooner or later to beco1ne an enemy to be destroyed.
With Mussolini it would be just the saine.
Churchill admired hi.tu. He envied the Italians for having such a duce.
But not being English, Mussolini, without any intention of doing so, of-
fended British supre1nacy. An insignificant head of goverruuent, in Paris,
in Rome, in Berlin, seived London's purposes to perfection. A genius is a
person whose existence, outside of the British entpire, all wortl1y English-
men n1ean to inhibit.
British reasoning was based, as always, on the sin1ple n1atter of the in-
terests at issue. After 1918 it was better to favor a weakened Germany,
whatever tl1e momentary irritation of the French. It was more intelligent
and above all more profitable to satisfy "the just grievances of the van-
quished" tl1an to see them taken by force without having first been able
to cash in on tllem while there was still thne.
When Churchill first began to oppose the plan of conciliating Hitler, he
had been forced to come up against the opinion of a British public far
l~ prepared than he was to sacrifice their tranquillity, and above all tlteir
skins, in order to pennit the resurrection of ancient European quarrels.
One test had been significant
In the by-elections in the district of East Fulhain, the partisans of dis-
annament and the partisans of a nascent bellicosity had 1net each otl1er
head on. The leader of tile Labour Party at tllat time, Mr. George Lansbtuy,
had declared tl1at "all nations should disann to the same level as Germany
in order to anive next at total disannament"
The Conservative candidate, who in this election of East Fulham had
wished to pass hilnself off as a lesser Churchill, had been thoroughly
trounced: he had lost 10,000 votes, while the partisan of peace by disar-
mrunent had gained 9,000.
"This passionate desire for peace," Churchill himself had to admit,
"animated the great mass of the British people."
The head of the Liberals, Sir Archibald Saint Clair, would go still fur-
ther: "It is imperative to call a new economic conference, not only to bring
Gennany into the political concert of nations, but to get her to collaborate
with us."
On March 16, 1935, after the rejection by Paris of Hitler's conciliatory
offers and tl1e French decision to increase her tenn of military service to
two years, Hitler had felt driven to proceed with reannament, though still
on a limited scale. And it was then precisely that the British people had
been called upon to voice an opinion on the uselessness or the necessity
of an increase in, or even simply of the maintenance of, the existing level
of annrunents.
Churchill, who for tl1e past year had arrogated unto himself the "priv-
ilege" of de1nanding on behalf of the United Kingdom an increase in their
anned forces, had been shaken up by the results of the East Fulham elec-
tion. In his book The Gathering Storm, he crabbily described how im-
portant a much more extensive opinion poll of the British nation had
become after that by-election.
"In the first months of 1935," he writes, «a referendum had been
arranged on collective security and the support that had to be given to the
Charter of tl1e League of Nations. The plan had been approved by the
League of Nations Union, but it was sponsored by an independent organ-
iz.ation largely supported by tl1e Labour Party and the Liberal Party." This
«referendwn for peace" specifically asked the Britons: «Are you in favor
of a general reduction of annainents by international agreement? Are you
in favor of a general ellinination of national annies and navies by intern&
tional agreement?"
Churchill could only add witl1 very painful surprise: «Jt was announced
on June 27 that more than 11 million persons had given an affinnative re-
sponse to this questionnaire." (Churchill, L'orage approche, p. 112.)
Eleven million! The figure was overwhelming. The real England did
not want to hear talk of conflict witl1 tl1e Gem1ru1S over annaments she
disapproved of.
"It seenlS to n1e," Churchill had tl1e preswnption to declare during a
session of tl1e House of Conuno11S, setting public opinion at defiance, "we
are nearing tl1e n101nent when attempting to make certain elements of
public opinion listen to reason will beco1ne pointless."
Fron1 tl1en on, in order to "n1ake them listen to reason," he would
begin systen1atically to fon1ent agitation, to invent imaginary perils, with
tl1e result he surely expected of distracting and bewildering the British
public.
But who in Europe, in God's name, in 1935, could have had the slight-
est designs on Great Britain? Nary a Gennan, Frenchman, or anyone else
on the planet was tllinking of going to London to steal a penny from an
Englishman's pocket!
Churchill nonetl1eless declared: "We are a rich and easy prey; no coun-
try is so vulnerable, and no other coW1try would be more pleasant to plWl-
der than ours.... With our enonnous metropolis, the biggest target in the
world, like an enonnous milch cow, fat and precious, tethered like bait for
beasts of prey; we find ourselves in an unprecedented situation." (Op.
cit., p. 116)
The image of those "beasts of prey" seizing the udder of the "enor-
mous milch cow, fat and precious," of Britain is not lacking in the pictur-
esque. For five years Churchill, with an overflowing imagination, would
hammer away at inventing more and more fabulous beasts-all Hitlerian,
to be sure-ready to devour the swollen udders of his compatriots.
Alas, the exaggerations would prove to be not just comical. The British
public-and even the French-would end up believing tllese bogeyman
stories, and the comic would become tragic. War would be the only beast
of prey. And Churchill would do everything in his power, from 1934 to
1939, to let it out of its cage.
It would t.ake time.
In the spring of 1935 the British public had not yet fallen into the tiger
trap. Many Britishers, on tlle contrary, were on the lookout for any pos-
sibility of maintaining tlle peace. Hitler, realizing as much, and with his
customary know-how, had not failed to extend a friendly hand to all those
Englishmen who refused to go out of their way looking for war.
He was not pleased at having to note that no coW1try had agreed to dis-
ann even by so much as a hand grenade. And even before Hitler had be-
con1e chancellor, French Prime Minister Joseph Paul-Boncour had been

forced to admit an intenninable refusal on tl1e part of other nations to
disann would inevitably lead Gennany to kicking over the traces:
"One does not by any means have to be a prophet to perceive that in
tl1e event of final failure of the labors of the disarmament conference,
or even of their indefinite adjournment, Gennany, freed of other re-
straints, will no longer accept being the only one subject to anns limi-
tations which the treaty itself specified to be the condition and also the
promise of a reduction by all." (Statement published in "le Journal" of
Paris, April 26, 1930.)
After eight years of hypocritical twisting and turning by the Geneva
delegates, Hitler had really been compelled to respond to the last con-
vening of the French assembly in 1935 (military service increased to two
years) by announcing the re-establishment of a Gennan anny which he
would nonetheless limit to 36 divisions, tl1at is to say, to barely half of the
anned forces of his most dangerous enemy and neighbor, ilie USSR.
A monili later, on April 15, 1935, to give food for thought to jingoists
like Churchill, Hitler had also announced tl1at he had included in his pro-
grain ilie construction of a few seagoing vessels and of 20 submarines.
As for aircraft, Germany was still only just working on the first models
offuture military planes.
Hitler also hastened to maintain his offers to participate in any fonn
of disannarnent, with tlle proviso as always-and approved moreover by
ilie recent British referendum-that the Reich would be admitted on an
equal basis by tlle other countries.
Speaking before tlle Reichstag on May 21, 1935, tlle Gennan chancel-
lor was anxious to make clear and definitive tlle breadth of his proposals.
He laid tllem out in several precise points:
"Following tlle refusal of tl1e otl1er states to disann, the Gennan gov-
ernment freed itself of the articles of tlle treaty which for tl1e Gennan na-
tion represented a discrimination witllout limitation of tenn. The Gennan
government solemnly declares, however, tllat it will respect tlle articles
concerning the communal life of nations." (Official Gennan text reprint.eel
by Benoist-Mechin, op. cit., pp. 260f.)
He com1nitted himself in advance to "carry out every treaty freely
signed," and to "signify (his] adhesion to an air convention to supplement
tl1e Locamo Pact."
A statement of the various conunitlnents was straightforward:
• "The Genuan govenunent is prepared as a matter of principle to

conclude a non~ion pact witl1 each of the neighboring states.
• "It is prepared at all runes to iinpose limitations on its annaments
tl1at would be acceptable to the otl1er states as well.
• "111e Genuan goventment is prepared to participate actively in any
efforts undertaken with a view to a practical limitation of armainents. It
considers tl1at tl1e best n1eans of attaining it is to return to the principles
of tl1e fonner Geneva Convention of the Red Cross.
• "TI1e Gennan govenunent is prepared to approve any limitation hav-
ing as its ain1 the abolishment of heavy offensive weapons (heavy artillery
and tanks)." (Ibid.)
However, to keep France from feeling any anxiety, Hitler conceded
that she could keep her Magi.not Line intact, thereby gaining a defensive
monopoly to the west
• "Given the fonnidable fortifications erected by France along her bor-
ders, such an abolishment would automatically ensure France absolute
security." (Ibid.)
CHAPTER
AGREAT MISSED OPPORTUNITY
he biggest surprise of the points enunciated by Hitler before

the Reichstag on May 21, 1935 would be the official an-
nouncement of the offer to limit Gennany's future fleet to
only 35% of the tonnage of the British fleet.
• "The Gennan government recognizes of its own accord the vital im-
portance and the legitimacy of the naval preponderance of the British
empire.
• "The Gennan government intends to do everything possible to estab-
lish and maintain relations with the United Kingdom of such a nature as
to forever prevent the recurrence between these two peoples of a conflict
like that of 1914-1918, the only one thus far that has seen them pitted
against each other." (Ibid.)
France, faithful to her inflexible policy of opposition, immediately re-
sponded with a categorical "no."
But on the British side, the 65% credited to his majesty's fleet had
made the utmost impression. Even the sedate 'limes had responded on
May 22, 1935 with an effusive editorial:
"No unbiased person can question the fact that Hitler's thirteen
points could serve as a basis for a definitive settlement of our relations
with Gennany."
Moreover, in British government circles there had not really been any
surprise. The British Cabinet ministers had months since been very con-
fidentially made aware by the Gennans of this project Hitler, intuitively

sensing the international obstacles he faced, had attempted to divert
British animosity by concessions on the sea that WIihelm II had refused
to grant in 1914.
Fro111 the beginning of his activities, Hitler had an overall plan. He had
prepared to build a true Gennanic community. For him, the two peoples,
born of the same race, had each a proper area of expansion: Great Britain
on the oceans, the Reich on the continent
That conception, to be sure, did not entirely correspond to that of the
classic Englishman. It went beyond their age-old leanings toward monop-
oly and did not take into account their horror of a strong continent But
Hitler, a revolutionary to the core, even in international policy, was deter-
mined to sweep away such antiquated exclusivism with any and all useful
concessions and arrive at a division of roles between two equally enter-
prising peoples set in opposition to each other only by outworn preju-
dices and egoisms.
Throughout his life Hitler would steadfastly pursue the realization of
that new conception of the Western World.
In May of 1940, he was given the possibility at Dunkirk of easily de-
stroying tl1e military forces of Great Britain. Such a defeat would probably
have left the fanatic Churchill without the means of continuing the war
he had so eagerly sought
But Hitler, in May of 1940, was looking 1nuch farther ahead: to the in-
dispensable reconciliation that a humiliating defeat of the British at that
point would have rendered much more chancy.
Again in May of 1941, in one last attempt at rapprochement, he would
sacrifice his most faithful lieutenant, his Knight of the Sky, Rudolf Hess.
Even on tlle eve of his death in April 1945, he would again allude to the
great missed opportunity which could have saved tile white world.
The British, in fact, would lose World War II at least as much as
Hitler did. They would see their empire sink into the abyss. They would
lose almost all the feathers of their proud peacock's tail. They would
never again be able to strut and swagger as in the flrunboyant centuries
of their great ancestoxs, Nelson and Wellington and the in1perial Jew,
Beajanlin Disraeli.
Brought back to their narrow isle, they would have at their c01n-
mand only a skimpy econo1ny, eroded by unemployment, tl1at would
become inferior to that of Italy.
A GREAT MISSED OPPORTUNITY I 219
Even reduced to a third of its ground, Gennany would recover much

better tJmn England fro1n tl1e disaster. In 1990, the second Anschluss of
U1e century would take place, tl1e return to the Reich of formerly sovi-
etized East Gennany, a first stage of resurrection.
Not wishing to wait until a great German victory at the time of the
Saar plebiscite which ntight give rise to anxiety abroad, Hitler had in the
previous October (1934) already quietly cast his net in the Thames.
Very discreetly he had sent an informal emissary, Herr von Ribben-
trop, to London for the purpose of establishing the initial contacts and to
dangle so1ne attractive proposals about in the old wainscoted offices of
Mr. Antl1ony Eden, Lord of the Privy Seal, and of Sir John Simon, the for-
eign secretary.
These offers had awakened interest.
On Jan. 25, 1935, two unofficial envoys of Great Britain came tiptoeing
into Berlin, Lord Allen of Hurtwood and Lord Lothian, the former secre-
tary of Lloyd George, the English victor of 1918.
On tl1at occasion Hitler was clearly in a position of prestige. He had
just won a great victory in tl1e Saar. Like an Englishman, he had played
fair. Hitler had won; London recognized it.
Hitler had received the "private" visitors courteously. For the first
tin1e, he broached his naval plan of 35%. He placed it on the table like a
te1npting dish.
He said straight out that he recognized British supremacy on the seas.
He was prepared to write it into a treaty.
In diplomacy, nothing is given for nothing. Four months later, when
the Naval Agreement giving juridical status to the initial bargaining was
signed, tl1e British were not being led into a trap. At the first meeting, on
Jan. 25, 1935, Hitler had let the two envoys clearly know what consider-
ation it was he sought: as her quid pro quo, GermanY, in keeping with
her national traditions and in order no longer to be put in a humiliating
position vis-a-vis the other countries, was to get a more powerful terri-
torial army.
The fish had not yet struck, but the fishhook had been cast
Against whom did Hitler intend to use the fishhook? Against France?
Hitler had said it 20 times: iltjuring the French was totally excluded from
his plans.
Then, against the British? But in that case, he would not have commit-
ted the ilnprudence of asking their acquiescence to an increase in Ger-
n1any's nli.litruy forces.

As regards tl\e West, he would gladJy dispense with all anns and witll
all troops. For Hitler, tlle sole danger he had to face lay in the East. That
was his great delusion.
Hitler had shown tl\e two British envoys the obverse and the reverse
sides of tlle coin he was offering: the reverse of the 35% was, for him, a
free hand in tl1e East.
As early as January 1935, tl\erefore, the British knew all about the dou-
ble purpose.
The British game as usual was subtle and full of nuances, not regard-
ing either friends or treaties, just the single interest: the iron law of the
City of London, the bankers.
Churchill would reveal in high dudgeon: "Discussions were begun
some time ago between the British and Gennan admiralties on the sub-
ject of tl\e proportions to be observed between the two fleets. His
Majesty's government did it without consulting France, its ally, and witll-
out infonning tile League of Nations. At the very moment when this same
government was appealing to the League of Nations and was obtaining
tile cooperation of its members to protest against the violation by Hitler
of the military clauses of the Treaty, it was endeavoring througl1 a private
agreement to render tile naval clauses of it null and void." (Churchill, 11ie
Ga.thering Sturm, p. 137.)
It should be added that tilere wasn't anything new about this: ships
for England in the West, open space for Hitler in the East. It had been
spelled out in Mein Kampf 10 years earlier.
Brought up to date in detail by his emissaries, the British foreign sec-
retary decided to go to Berlin himself on March 7, 1935.
He had thought beforehand to use intimidation.
Thus, on the very eve of his trip he had issued a "White Paper" in Lon-
don condemning the first attempts made by the Gennans to rebuild tlleir
military, and announcing an acceleration of the rearmament of Britain's
air force.
Hitler hit the ceiling. Intimidate him! At once he canceled tile interview
set up for tile following day, March 7, with the British secretary.
Since Sir John Simon treated him that way on the very eve of their
meeting, he would st.ep up the pace and steal a march on the British: two
days later he would officially announce that in view of the reinforcement
of the British air force, he would develop his, too, this at a time when it
Here, British Ambassador Sir Eric Phipps and Secretary of State Sir John Simon meet
with Reich Minister for Foreign Affairs Konstantin Freiherr von Neurath and Reich
Chancellor Adolf Hitler. Phipps was a radical anti-German activist with whom Hitler's
government often refused to meet; Simon was a -Nationalist Liberal" in the British Par-
liament who played a major role in the suppression of Sir Oswald Moseley's British
Union of Fascists. Their presence in Germany was a calculated British insult to Hitler.
BPREMIUM251846/0R. WllfRIED BAHNM0LLER
had scarcely been created! Uppercut against uppercut!

Following in tl1e footsteps of the British, the French a week later, on
March 16, 1935, had 1nade their frunous two years of service official.
Asecond riposte by Hitler: on the srune day, he ordered the reconsti-
tution in Gennru1y of three anny corps, forces still clearly inferior to the
military forces of the other nations. They would remain so, and by a wide
margin, even in 1940.
But he proposed to compensate for this nmnerical inferiority by tech-
nical superiority, by a new art of warfare that the old generals over the
way, their brains wedged in the past, would be incapable of imagining, or
even shnply understanding at the tiine when they would be stn1ck by the
evidence of the facts.
222 I HlTLElt DEMOCRAT
Hitler did not try to 1nininlize tl1e launching of his double riposte. On
March 17, 1935, Berlin shook tu1der the 111artial cadence of a great military
parade baptized "tl,e Day of Re1ne1nbrance of our Heroes." Hitler had
1nobilized right down to tl1e aged Marshal von Mackensen stuffed back
into his n1otl1-eaten Hus.sars unifonn. TI1e nu1rshal went witl1 Hitler and
,vitl1 all tl1e surviving generals of 1914-1919 down the avenue Unter den
Linden decorated witl1 tl1e glorious flags of the defeated. An enormous
cro,vd cheered tl1e1n. The new anny of tl1e Reich received the never ex-
tinguished torch of the past.
After these nearly instant ripostes of Hitler, what were the British
going to do? They were going to come along to Berlin all the same. Being
a realist means accepting the facts. To come to Berlin was to ratify, in ad-
vance, tl1e decisions of the Chancellor of the Reich. Secretaries Eden and
Simon would anive in the capital of Gennany the same month.
Hitler awaited then1 resolutely but was in no way uncivil. He listened
to them patiently and with extreme politeness.
Eden, who had expected to meet a kind of Papua New Guinea savage
in tlle chancellery-with a bone in his nose and a stone ax in his fist-was
surprised and even charmed. He did not conceal it
The next day, when the British ministers reappeared at Hitler's office,
their surprise would be extreme.
Simon, having asked Hitler a question about the extensiveness of Ger-
n1any's air rearmament, he drew a response that left him stunned: "Ger-
many has already attained equality of forces."
It was not so at all. Hitler was bluffing. He was thoroughly versed in
the art of tactics.
"The declaration," historian Joachim Fest has written, "had the effect
of a shock and made the Englishman cat.eh his breath. According to the
story of one of the participants in these talks, no one said a word for sev-
eral moments. The faces reflected doubt, surprise, and consternation.
That was the decisive turning point In that moment it was understood
why Hitler had postponed the date of the talks until the air reannament
and the reintroduction of compulsory service had been made public: not
being able to win England by the sole seduction of her armaments, he
could give real weight to his proposals only by threat and pressure. It is
arms tllat lead people to discuss." (Hitler, vol. II, pp. 138f.)
If tl,at was really tile way tllin~ stood, the British ministers were say-
ing to themselves, it was more urgent than ever to discuss and negotiate.
If tJ1ey still hung back, ti1ey could only see tile threat getting worse.
Was this Hitler, seemingly already so strong and detennined, prepared
to agree that his fleet should always remain inferior to that of the English?
The rest of it was much less important! The fleet was the backbone of
England. It was better to be calm on that side, since an agreement con-
cerning this is still possible.
Much impressed and coldly realistic, the two British ministers con-
cluded in a few minutes that an agreement on that basis was of great in-
terest to their country.
"The principle clause of this agreement," Churchill would acknowl-
edge, "was the commitment made by Germany not to increase her fleet
to more than a third of the British fleet. This commitment greatly capti-
vated the Admiralty, who were going back to the days before the Great
War when they were contented with a ratio of six to 10."
Hitler, Eden and Simon quickly came to an agreement to have a fol-
lowing meeting in London, where a definitive text would be worked out.
Ribbentrop would proceed there in Hitler's name in the month of June.
They congratulated each other.
An extraordinary occurrence: At the end of the sojourn of the British
ministers, Hitler was invited to the Berlin embassy of His British Majesty.
He went there with quite a retinue, accompanied by Goering, by Goebbels
and by Ribbentrop.
How would they be received? The British ambassador, Sir Eric
Phipps, had lined up his children in the large ceremonial drawing room.
Upon Hitler's entrance, they saluted him, their little arms held out
Hitler fashion!
You have to read and reread the accounts of the historians to believe
it really happened that way. Even someone like Fest can only note with
amazement this so significant behavior: "Hitler proceeded to the British
embassy with Goering, Goebbels, Ribbentrop and a few members of his
Cabinet The master of the house Sir Eric Phipps, had already 3$embled
' .
his children in the large drawing room: they raised their little arms to give
the Hitler salute and cried out a timid 'Heil!' "
The London theater was ready for the last act.
The British, as old soccer champions, had told themselves tltat a re-
turn match on their home field would give them an advantage.
. · al little conces-
They no doubt coW1ted on squeezing a few add1tton
sions out of the Germans.
224 I IHTLEH DEMOCHAT
Hitler had sensed their grune; and he had also laid down to Ribbentrop
the litnits he had set on his pruticipatlon.
"Tull the British that 1ny offer to litnit the Gennrut fleet to 35% of the
total tonnage of tlte Btitish fleet is a unique and irrevocable proposal that
I shall not renew. It cruu1ot in any case be used as a basis for bargaining.
If the Btitish imagine that they can get 1ne to bring tl1at proposal down to
33% or 25%, after having ch·agged tllings out for several years, they are
1nerely deceiving the1nselves. The 35% is not a final objective. Their ac-
ceptance of it is tl1e prelinili1ary condition of all negotiation." (Benoist-
~1echin, op. cit.., vol. Ill, p. 263.)
Ribbentrop was itnpetious by nature. At Downing Street, in tl1e For-
eign Office, tl1e British had anticipated that a grand preliininary proces-
sion of the custo1nary courtesies, followed by clever circu1nlocutions,
would subtly lead to the possibility of improving on the ratio of 35%-65%
envisaged by Berlin.
Then, abruptly, a shock! Ribbentrop was hardly seated when he drew
hitnself up straight in his chair, cutting short any atte1npt to get round
hitn with sn1ootl1-tongued bla111ey:
"As for our conditions, you may take tl1e1n or leave them. If His
Majesty's goverrunent is not disposed to accept the1n, it is useless to con-
tit1ue tl1e talks. TI1at point nu1st be established before going any further."
(Ibid.)
Foreign Secretacy Simon could not have been more stupefied if tl1e
great Venetian chandelier had fallen right on his head.
He stood up, utterly indignant: "That's inachnissible. You don't throw
conditions down on the table that way before we've even begun negoti-
ations."
Never before had so lively an incident shattered the calln of the British
Foreign Office, the temple of good fonn, beribboned proposals and pol-
ished hypocrisy. Sir John Simon had stiffened, become coldly hostile.
Without so much as another glance at Ribbentrop, he made for the door.
An usher showed Ribbentrop to the stairs.
CHAPTER
ENGLAND MOVES TOWARD WAR
egotiations had been carried on for months, and Hitler

would put an end to them with just a few words to Ribben-
trop. This after so many ambas.5adors' reports; after Hitler
himself had spent 10 years explaining that an AnglerGennan
entente would be the No. 1 priority of his grand political
plans, that he would 1nake the most dangerous concessions for its suc-
cess. Ribbentrop's de1nands and his bluntness were only the stage set-
ting; they were meant only to disconcert the Britishers, to hurry them up
with an unexpected coup and then, in the ensuing scare, get them to give
up any tl1ought of 1nodifying the future treaty in their favor.
Politics is a box of surprises. It is necessary to surprise the adversacy,
as in a war, whether by an unexpected attack or by an original ruse. This
is the ABC of all co1nbat And Hitler knew his ABCs.
The British fleet? Well, to convince the British-if they had been more
discerning and hence tougher-Hitler would have let them have another
10 percent of tonnage, witl1 less risk of failure.
The proof of it is tl1at Hitler did not ever even utilize completely the
tonnage he demanded so bn1squely and was to obtain.
He would build fewer ships than he was going to have granted him by
the agreement And not even half of the submarines.
Churchill would later note with astonishment:
"Gennany had been authorized to construct five battleships, two air-
craft earners, 21 cn1isers and 64 destroyers. In fac~ all she had completed
or close to completed when tl1e hostilities began, were two ships of the
line, 11 cntisers, 25 destroyers, and no aircraft carriers, that is to say, con-
siderably less tl1an half of what we had so obligingly conceded him."
(Churchill, The Ga.thering Sto1m, p. 138.)
Churchill added: "The English [sic-the Gennans?] could have put
tl1emselves in a n1ore advantageous position for a war against Great
Britain in 1939 or 1940." (Ibid.)
That calculated act had as its goal first of all to show the British that
the tin1e of dictating to Germany was over.
Hitler was a calculator. He no longer believed in the effectiveness
of these n1onsters of the oceans that a simple torpedo could send to the
bottom in a matter of minutes. Building a hundred tanks cost less in
steel and manpower tl1an a single destroyer. Ten annored divisions in-
terested Hitler more tllan 10 cruisers. Having enough ships to ensure
tl1e defense of the Baltic Sea in the event of conflict with the USSR was
sufficient for him.
So the Britishers had gone int.o a panic over a trifle. Ribbentrop's stun-
ning gambit had succeeded. Whereas the day before everything had ap-
peared t.o be lost, the next day the German minister was asked witll great
cordiality to come back to the British Foreign Office.
Benoist-Mechin tells us, a bit amused: "On the next day they invite
Ribbentrop to resume the talks. This time tile session takes place not in
the Foreign Office, but in the Council Room of the AdmiraltY, where the
decorations call back the annals of three centuries of British naval hege-
mony. At one end of the room lined with wainscoting of the 18th century,
one sees a large compass card fastened to a weather vane that allowed
the Lords of the Admiralty at the time of the sailing ships to prepare their
plans of battle. A bit farther along, there is a notch marking Nelson's
exact height cut into an oak panel. Nothing seems to have changed since
Abukir and Trafalgar.
"His reception by the Englishmen is exceedingly friendly. The British
delegation is composed of Sir Robert Craigie, Adm. Little and Capt.
Dankwerts. Gennany is represented by Ribbentrop, Adm. Schuster, Lt.
Cmdr. Kiderlen, Embassy Advisor Woennann, Capt. Wasmer, tl1e naval
attache at London, and the Legation Advisor, Erich Kordt.
"At the beginning of the meeting, Sir Robert Craigie, pennanent un-
dersecretary of State of the Foreign Office, reads a short statement, to
the very great surprise of the delegates of the Reich: it is an acceptance
ENGLAND MOV~:S TOWARD WAR I 227
pure and sin1ple of the Gennan conditions." (Benoist-Mechin, op. cit.,

pp. 264-266.)
"The British fleet," Churchill took pleasure in repeating, "always trav-
els first class." The less boastful Hitler had just taken it for a boat ride.
As anyone could have foreseen, when Paris learned of the Anglo-Ger-
man naval agree1nent made behind her back, "there was great discont.ent
in France," as Duroselle chastely put it.
Not only was the date chosen for signing the agreement-the 18th of
July, Waterloo salt in the wound- but the Anglo-Gennan naval pact
thencefortl1 rendered impossible, even derisory, any claim against the
Gennans relative to any violation whatsoever of the Treaty of Versailles,
since Great Britain had just trampled it herself when pennitting Gennany
to have a war fleet, which the Treaty totally forbade.
Paris had trapped herself. Her total policy for 15 years had inflexibly
consisted of enclosing Gennany tightly in the corset of Versailles. Now
the British had exploded it.
"The signing of the naval pact provoked very violent reactions in
Paris," not.es Benoist-Medlin. "The French government did not hesitat.e
to say she considered the British decision morally inachnissible andjuridi-
cally untenable. Can one blame Gennany for repudiating the clauses of
the Treaty, when England herself helps her t.ear up the little of it that still
remains. It will be a near thing if England is not accused of having be-
trayed her allies." (Ibid.)
Pierre Laval went running to demand an explanation of the British
charge d'affaires: "I run not a gentleman, but I would not have act.ed as
you have just done."
Henri Beraud, the country's premier journalist, would even go so far
as to write at the head of "Gringoire," the most important weekly in
France: "I say, and I repeat, that Englru1d must be reduced to slavery!"
Those reproaches and insults do not, however, bother England. Lord
Londonderry, in the House of Lords on June 22, 1936, will just shrug his
shoulders and respond: "We are a practical people who are in tl1e habit of
taking realities into account."
"This day is the n1ost beautiful day of my life," says Hitler under his
breath in Berlin.
He had won all along the line. He had 1nru1aged to have tl1e Treaty of
Versailles shattered by one of the principal countries tllat had imposed it!
Benoist-Medlin observes that "for tile first time, one of the signatories
of tlle 'lreaty of Versailles had accepted tl\e argu1nents of the Reich on clis-
annaincnt."
And the Sorbom1e professor, Pierre Renouvin, re1narks in turn: "That
revision of tl1e naval clauses of the Versailles Treaty, decided without the
French govenunent having been consulted, has created a precedent tl1at
Gennai1 dipl01nacy will be able to 1nake use of when she wishes to get out
of tl1e ntllitary clauses." (Les Orises du XXe siecle, vol. II, p. 92.)
Moreover, he had just set tl1e English alld the French, whose union
had for years put hhn in real dai1ger, against each other; alld that also en-
tered into his calculations.
Even Mussolini, always a joint partner of the Allies, and at that time
still a violent opponent of all tlm1gs Gennan, had been very astonished by
tlus double gaine ai1d began to get angry. He had not foreseen it any more
than tlle French. And he, too, felt it an affront
Relations between London and Paris would no longer be as before. A
cog in the anti-Gennan machine had broken.
Historian Joachim Fest would write these disillusioned lines:
"It had to be acknowledged, not without irritation tinged with a certain
respect, that Hitler was capable of breaking up the common front of his
opponents and turning them one against another. Undoubtedly more ag.
tonishing again was the talent with which he immediately spread among
tl\e victors (after having done so among the losers) the growing con-
sciousness of the untenable character of the system of peace which they
themselves had solemnly proclaimed 15 years earlier." (Fest, op. cit., voL
II, p. 236.)
In two months, Hitler had Versailles well in hand.
In order to maintain her policy of smothering Gennany, France had al-
ways kept a ready arsenal at her disposal.
One of her preferred weapons since the end of 1918 had been the bar-
rier of a "Little Entente" which she had set up in the Southeast of Europe,
and which, in reality, would always be a big mesentente [misunderstand-
ing or disagreement].
In 1935, several links of this chain were already cracked. The French
Minister Barthou had come back very disappointed from his rom1d of vis-
its to Warsaw, Bucharest and Belgrade. Only Belgrade had not-yet-
abandoned tile Republic.
Manifestly these demanding little allies of Central Europe who had
been force-fed money and weapons by France for years were not eager
ENGLAND MOVES TOWARD WAR I 229
to play the role of supplementacy soldiers.

Anotl1er possibility had appeared, a much more important one, and
one which fitted an historic tradition: Russia
In 1914 she had saved the sly wannongering expert who was then
president of the republic, M. Raymond Poincare: in the last days of August
1914, she had held several of the Kaiser's divisions on the Prussian border
and had made Moltke, his chief of the general staff, lose his head.
Moltke had believed it necessary to pull back in all haste from the
western front the two German anny corps that were then nearing Paris.
A needless withdrawal. They were still on the trains getting ready to
leave when the Russians were crushed by Hindenburg and Ludendorff.
But that Russian defensive had saved France. With those two additional
anny corps, Moltke would almost certainly have defeated the forces of
Gen. Joffre.
TI1anks to the 200,000 Russians killed, drowned or made prisoner at
Tannenberg and the precipitate withdrawal of two anny corps on the
point of reaching Paris, at the beginning of September of 1914, France
had been able at the last moment to stop the German army at the Mame.
The Russia of 1935 was no longer the Russia of 1917. But there was
no change in her immense size. Or in her gigantic reseIVoir of manpower.
The Soviets who succeeded czarism had committed horrible crimes,
murdered rebels by the millions. They ought therefore to have horrified
the French, from whom moreover they had stolen 15 billion gold francs
placed in Russia before the Bolshevik revolution of 1917.
Wmston Churchill, one of the few Englishmen in 1935 who were al-
ready inciting the French to crush Germany, had personally spoken of
the revulsion that the Soviets inspired in him:
"Of all the tyrannies mentioned in history, Bolshevism is the most
frightful, the most destructive, the most degrading."
With his usual vigor of language, he had given a precise definition of
this plague: "Bolshevism isn't a political doctrine. It is not a creation. It
is an infection." (Jacques Chastenet, Winston Churchill, p. 203.)
He had even wanted to turn his words into actions.
Lloyd George wrote: "Wmston Churchill, with his customary violence,
showed himself to be a partisan of going to war against the Bolsheviks."
(Ibid., p. 205.)
Wars had always delighted this vociferous battler. Wherever they
broke out, he went there, on the run. When wars didn't arrive fast
2:\0 I HITI.EH DEMOCRAT
enough, Churchill preached wars, or even provoked the1n, as would be

seen in 1939.
A hundred tunes over, he'd had occasion to note that his frenzy for
war w·clS not to the taste of the B1itish people. He knew pe1fectly well tl1at
nothing was 1nore unpopular in Great B1itain in 1935 tl1an wrun1ongering.
And tllat every govenunent that had at that tiine advocated it had been
tun1ed out,
Pli1ne :Minister Baldwin had been frank to avow: "Supposing I had
gone to tl1e country and said that Gennany was reanning and that we
nu1St reann, does anybody think that this pacific de1nocracy would have
rallied to that cry at tl1at 1non1ent? I cannot tltlnk of anytltlng that would
have 1nade tl1e loss of tl1e election fro1n 1ny point of view more certain."
Churchill was just as persuaded of it as Baldwin. But public opinion,
for hiin, was not a force to be respected, but an instrument to manipulate
and utilize.
If England fotu1d herself one day witl1 a war on her back, that was her
busiI1~. His busine$ was to make use of it as soon as po$ible as a bat-
tering ran1.
A figl1t witl1 Gem1any had become his main objective that year, ever
since Hitler had started running tllings after 15 years of spinele$ govern-
ment CreatiI1g once again a country preponderant in Europe was in
Churchill's eyes, as we know, a criine totally opposed to tl1e strategy pur-
sued by tl1e British for centuries.
"It seems to n1e," he had declared in the Commons to his colleagues
of U1e Foreign Office, "that our national secutity depends on the coalition
we can fom1 to contain ru1d, if necessacy, defeat Gennru1y's will to dom-
inate."
That being so, any enemy whatsoever would be welco1ne who could
make tl1e pesky Gennan adhere to U1e long-standing doctrine tl1at all oc-
cidental competitors must remain weak You must even extend your
hands to tl1e still bloody hands of those horrible Soviets whom you pre-
viously criticized so severely.
"Sooner an alliance with the devil," Churchill cried, "tl1ru1 a continental
Europe dotninated by a great power!"
If to "see Germany surrounded," it was neces.sary to enlist tl1e devil in
your ranks, long live the devil and his red-hot pitchfork!
\Vhy had France proved 1nore papist thall this old Anglican? Even be-
fore the plebiscite of the Saar, Paris, no 1nore particular than Churchill,
had endeavored to curry favor with the Moscow paragons of virtue.

These proceedings had begun very early. Already in 1934, when Hitler
had hardly begun and had not yet co1nmitted any heinous crimes other
than putting tl1ree 1nillion unemployed back t.o work, and had at his dis-
posal only a sort of ceremonial army, France had felt a ravenous hunger
for fraternization with the Russians.
There had been nothing of romanticis1n in these first moves. M.
Downergue was attracted neither by the vodka nor the ballet All that
counted for Paris was setting in motion the mechanism for a vast encir-
clement of the Third Reich and getting the support of the new Soviet
Anny. The latter, in 1933, had an available 800,000 men and had been re-
inforced by another 400,000 soldiers the same year. That was 13 times the
size of the Reichswehr of the Treaty of Versailles.
The Soviet air force could also fly for Paris.
"At that time," wrote the French press, "the air potential of the Rus-
sians was considerable and that of the Germans zero."
The military budget of the Soviets had been more than doubled: 6.5 bil-
lion rubies in 1933; 14.8 billion, in 1934; aln1ost double that of France (8
billion francs).
"Diplomacy," coldly declared the old French ambassador, Jules Cam-
bon, "is above all a question of geography. There are eternal laws. If
France wants to fight against a great Germany, an alliance with the East
is indispensable."
If Crunbon had been responsible for the orientation of his government,
this diplo1nat-he afflnned it straightforwardly-would have sought a
Soviet alliance i.n11nediately.
"If I were in power, I should undertake every sort of rapprochement
with Russia In order to hold out against Germany, France needs Russia,
or she will not hold out"
Cambon's conclusion was radical:
"Only one thing is ilnportant: we must succeed in containing the invad-
ing Pan-Gennanism; nothing else counts."
In a newspaper as "reactionary" as L'Echo de Paris, one could even
read: "It would be folly at the present tiine not to be on good terms with
the USSR."
M. Edouard Herriot, a negotiator of the hearty type and pudgy as the
Bibendmn of Michelin tires, was sent to the Kremlin to do the initial bow-
ing alld scraping.
He was a veteran politician. He had been prime minister. France

spared no e>.-pense. TI1e n1an was heavy, rather ordinary, in trousers that
were never p ~ . But in Moscow, elegance didn't set the fashion for
eitJ1er n1en or won1en. Heniot, dressed like a muzhik, would not be out
of place ainong tl1e others. Adiplomat in a cutaway would have seemed
like an int.ntder in Moscow. Witl1 Heniot, one could be assured, tl1e dan-
ger of shocking anyone witl1 his clotl1es was nil.
Moscow in those days was already gloo1ny. The people, dead tired,
spent an eternity in endless lines to obtain a few coupons good for rye
bread or rutabagas. No taxis in tl1e streets, or young couples in love ei-
tl1er. But Comn1unist speeches without end coming out of loudspeakers.
TI1e six deputies and senators who were accompanying Heniot had
got tl1e words, "you are my treasure," translated for themselves in ad-
vance-words tlley surely counted on whispering into the ears of balleri-
nas who would be dazzled at being addressed by French Adonises.
However, our noble graybeards were very disappointed to find that the
"Soviet treasures" were prudes and refused their advances.
"What a quaint country you have," a young "people's commissar" said
to them. "With you, it is not youth that is enterprising, but old age!"
The rough janissaries of the Kremlin were more approachable. Stalin,
to be sure, would not put in an appearance. Ponderous and prudent dig-
nitaries took his place. They didn't waste time on futilities. Negotiations,
to them, meant alliance, not beribboned circumlocutions in the Parisian
fashion.
"We carmot imagine a rapprochement witll you without a new political
and military pact," bluntly declared the Soviet minister of foreign affairs,
Maksim Maksimovich Vallakt, alias Litvinov, an important Jew and hence
a devoted ally, one could well believe.
Another French star of the Left had been sent to the rescue. It was the
extremist Pierre Cot, then air minister.
His military counterpart in Moscow had been the best Soviet strate-
gist, Marshal Tukhachevsky. The latter had served as a young officer
under the last cr.ar. He had spent some months in a military prison at In-
golstadt in Gennany in tile company of a tall, spindly-legged beanpole of
a French officer who would later have something of a reputation: his
name was de Gaulle. During that detention, the Russian had managed to
learn from him a certain amount about the French army.
Tukhachevsky immediately proved to be just as intransigent as Litvi-
nov. "What we want," he said to Cot, "is a more serious and infinitely
closer military pact tl1an the military alliance France fonnerly had with
czarist Russia"
The Frenchman nodded his head. Like the technicians who had ac-
companied him, he was impressed, because he had seen.
On his return to Paris, he explained to the director general of the Air
Ministry, "We have seen an aircraft industry and heavy industry infinitely
more developed than we expected." They could serve against Hitler, so
it was good to have tl1em on your side! Cot, despite the draconian condi-
tions of the Soviets, had come away decidedly optimistic.
The only sure ally the French government still had in Central Europe,
Czechoslovakia, had provided an example: on July 2, 1934, she officially
recognized the Soviet state.
France would do much better still: she was going to make every effort
to have the USSR admitted into the League of Nations, which had always
rejected her-and which Lenin moreover had called "an enterprise of
brigands."
Pierre Laval was a French politician, left-leaning socialist and nationalist who twice
participated in the Vichy government after the collapse of the Third Republic after the
failure of its aggressive war against National Socialist Germany. Though Laval ac-
cepted his position reluctantly and considered his ability to keep the remnant of France
out of war with the Allies as key policy achievement, he became a focus of hatred by
Jewish and Communist activists, who summarily executed him in 1945 during the Al-
lied occupation. BIBLIOTHl!OUE NATIONALE OE FRANCE
CHAPTER
FRANCE PLAYS WITH FIRE
uring 1935, the Swiss delegate to the League of Nations,

Giuseppe Motta, tried in vain to lead a last-ditch fight
against the Bolsheviks, whom France presented for admis-
sion into that august body. He argued, "Does a regime with
a policy of expansionist and militant Communism fuifill the
neces.5ary requirements for admission amon~t us? I don't think so. Be-
cause in every sphere-religious, moral, social, political, economic-
Communism is the most radical negation of all the ideas which make up
our substance and by which we live. The League of Nations is embarking
on a hazardous undertaking when she seeks to join fire and water."
The French delegates, whether or not they liked water, did not fear to
play with fire, even Soviet fire. Kindness toward the Soviet Union could
be diplomatically and militarily very rewarding. Minister Barthou got up
on his thin le~ and mounted the platform. "Repulse Russia?" he ex-
claimed. "To where? Against Europe? I rest my case."
The future ally, Moscow, as represented by the Jew Maxim Litvinov
(ne Wallach), was absolutely enchanted:
"I shall remember with gratitude," he said to his new colleagues, "the
initiative taken by the French government as well as the sincere efforts
made by the French delegation, and by their Minister of Foreign Affairs
M. Barthou, personally." (Speech made by Soviet Commissar for Foreign
Relations Maxim Litvinov at the League of Nations on Sept 18, 1934.)
Barthou, so wannly felicitated by the Soviets, would not long savor the
2:\6 I HITI.EH DEMOCRAT
co1uplbnent. Three weeks late1· a Croatian tenulist would assassinate

hi1n, and on French soil at tllat. His Belgrade visit to the worst enenlies
of the Croats, tlle Yugoslavs (styled by hhn "the valiant Czechs"[!]), had
thus co1ne to a rather abn1pt denoue1nent in tl1e fonn of a bullet.
Did Ba11hou's efforts at rapproche1nent then co111e to naught?
By no 1neans. At Palis as at Moscow, there was a desire to come to-
getl1er. Barthou was hardly btuied-and quickly forgotten-before nego-
tiations were under way again, first at Palis, then at Moscow again. They
would rapidly result in a draft agree1nent providing (Alticle II) that "in
the event of an unprovoked aggression"-the criteria of which were not
stipulated-"tl1e USSR and France would reciprocally lend iirunediate
aid and assistance."
The French nililister Pien-e Laval, who had succeeded the deceased
Barthou at tl1e Quai d'Orsay, ,vas alanned upon reading tl1at terribly com-
pronlising conunitinent. He re1narked: "TI1e Soviets want a treaty to wage
war." (Alfred Mallet, Pierre Laval, vol. I, p. 85.)
It was quite obvious. What else had tl1ey done for the past 70 years,
or ,vottld do afterward fro1n Poland and Finland of 1939 right up to the
abortive seizure of faraway Afghanistan in 1982? Russian imperialism
1nay have changed flags in 1917, but it did not change its nature in the
slightest.
Pierre Laval was a 1nan of peace. He had wished, as tlle Soviet ambas-
sador Potentkin ,vrote, "to give tlle future pact a purely fonnal character."
(Potentkin, Histoire de la Divfnmatie, vol. m, p. 350.)
Because of Laval's hesitancy, the affair very nearly went amiss. But his
trip to tl1e Mecca of Moscow in tlle footsteps of Herriot and Cot was al-
ready set and could no longer be canceled. Laval, a shrewd politician,
still ,vished to believe tl1at when it came right down to it, llis well-honed
craftiness nlight brunboozle Stalin a bit.
"What is diplomacy?" he was wont to say. "You offer some things, and
tlley offer you otllers. And you wind up by conling to an agreement. It's
no n1ore difficult than tllat"
It would, however, be more difficult "than tllat"
To be sure, Laval would be feted by tlle Russians. Litvinov would
give a sensational reception in his honor in the manner of the old
regime, with Oumansky, Potemkin and Sokolin prancing about like
chrunberlains of tlle czar.
Stalin himself invited Laval to tlle Kremlin, not to the immense ilnpe-
FRANCE PLAYS WITH FIRE I 237
rial salons but to a cozy cellar where vodka, smoked fish and caviar made
equals of Red nuushals and petty bourgeois Frenchmen.
Once again Tukhachevsky was there, his manner grave, his blue eyes
n1ystelious. Laval, as relaxed as after a ministerial crisis in Paris, ex-
plained good-hu1noredly that Molotov resembled his moon-faced col-
league Loucheur, a French Cabinet minister. They even talked of
livestock, a subject in which Laval excelled. He had given Stalin some
tips on how to get more calves from his cows. Stalin, easygoing, had lis-
tened to tl1e self-satisfied Laval. An hour of small talk about the cows of
Chateldon was of sn1all matter to the Bolsheviks. Laval had just signed
the pact.
And, above all, a protocol which provided for the accord to apply im-
n1ediately in the event of a foreign war, with or without the recommen-
dation of the League of Nations.
The first paragraph of this protocol was particularly compromising:
"It is understood that each of the contracting parties shall under the tenTlS
of Article 16 of the pact lend assistance to the other immediately in im-
mediate conformity with the reconunendations of the Council of the
League of Nations as soon as such shall have been pronounced. It is
equally understood that the two contracting parties shall act with all the
speed demanded by tl1e circumstances and that if, notwithstanding, the
council for any reason whatever does not express any recommendation
or does not reach a unrulin1ous decision, the obligation to assist will no
less apply.n
Thus, if "for any reason whatsoever/ tl1e League of Nations delayed,
France would be required to act "with all the speed demanded by the cir-
cumstances. n
Act against who1n?
It could only be tl1e Germans, the only ones who would be likely one
day to have a bone to pick with tl1e Soviets.
"The redaction of paragraph 4, n writes Benoist-Mechin, "leaves no
roon1 for doubt: as it is neither Lithuania nor Poland tl1at will attack the
USSR, tl1e pact is 1nanifestly directed against Germany. n(Op. cit., p. 974.)
"This pact,n French historian Andre Brissaud likewise admits, "is man-
ifestly directed against Gennany. n(Brissaud, Hiller et son temps, p. 244.)
The French and the Germans had a common border. In the event of
a fight in the East, French soldiers would immediately proceed to the
shooting range. The other guarantor, Russia, would run no similar risk,
since the USSR had no border with the Reich.

To go to the aid of the Fi·encl\ by attacking the Gennans, it would be
neces.53IY to pass ac~ Polish and Lithuanian territory: and these two
cow\tries would be radically opposed to that They knew if Soviet troops
entered their lands, they would never leave. That was the reason why
Poland and Ro1na.niahad refused to concede to Barthou any right of pas-
sage whatsoever for the Bolsheviks and had very nearly broken with the
French when tl\e latter had insisted.
In the event, tl\en, tl1at tl1e bilateral agreement had to be kept, the Red
Anny would not be running any risk at all of corning up against the
Wehnnacht, separated from them as it was by some 500 kilometers that
tlle Gennany anny would first have to cross. Poland would no doubt be
devoured en 1rru,te. After that, they would see. If worse caine to worst,
they would share.
"The partitioning of Poland," it had often been said in both Moscow
and Berlin, "is part of a long historical tradition."
Stalin had ldlled two birds with one stone, because the Czechs-the
only allies that France had left in Central Europe-had also signed a
treaty of similar import with him on May 16, 1935. Stalin must have snick-
ered in his mustache there in the cellar of the Kremlin, where Laval had
talked with such eloquence of his wonder-working cows and their legions
of calves.
In signing this leonine convention, Laval had surely not overlooked
the danger of Gennan resentment
He shared, like almost all the French, the peevish anti-Gerrnanism that
was older than the hills. He had the same desire as other Frenchmen to
oppose any recovery by the Reich. But the taste he had for the intrigue
itself often outweighed his passion. He was conciliatory by nature. His
great political skill lay essentially in horse trading, where artful offers and
refusals counterbalanced each other.
In his heart, he did not want either a war against the Germans or a
militaiy conflict with anyone. People, like his model cattle, needed to
graze in peace if they were to grow fat
The agreement with the Soviets-which he hadn't conceived of him-
self, but which he had inherited from his predecessor, Barthou--could
give the French back a pleasant sense of security. In Paris, it was possible
to think that Hitler, thanks to the threat lying to the East, would be tightly
confined within his borders and would have to keep to his own kennel
Marshal Petain and Pierre Laval, vice chairman of the Cabinet from July to December
1940, then head of government starting in April of 1942. Petain had advocated that
France avoid a war with Germany for which its military was unprepared, and had advo-
cated an armistice before the German invasion. Once war began, Laval had been an
advocate for French victory until the complete destruction of the French military. The
two led the Vichy government from 1940 to 1945. SOURCE: sHo
Laval counted on his talents as a smooth negotiator to intimidate the Hit-

lerian n1astiff before it intended to bite h.iin.
But there was nothing of the horse trader about Hitler. Aclever sales
pitch would not suffice to soften hi.In or make hi.In alter his opinion. The
prospect of an attack did not frighten hi.In, as would soon be seen.
Sooner or later s01neone would have to pay for the damage wrought
in Moscow.
After signing his pact in Moscow and before retuntlng to Paris, Laval,
lntsting to his gift of gab and to his feats of prestidigitation, stopped ofI
in Poland. TI1at stay, he was tlili1king, would allow hi.In to exercise ltls tal-
240 I HtTL.Ell DEMOCRAT
ents as a capable bargainer. For Marshal Pilsudski was being buried at

\\Tarsaw at the thne, and Goering was coining there to represent the
F\1ehrer of tl1e Reich. Witl1 a bit of finesse, Laval would put the mighty
Gennan in his hip pocket.
The 1neeting took place at the Europajsky Hotel, where Laval had
dined at one table and Goering at anotl1er. Directly tl1ereafter they met
again in a salon.
The dialogue was instructive.
Goering: "Let's agree, tl1e two of us between ourselves. France and
Gennany, tl1e two together, are mistress of the world. But if you continue
witl1 your alliances in tl1e East, we shall not be able to do anything with
you, and Europe will go to war."
Ratl1er than say yes or no, Laval preferred to try to bamboozle his cor-
pulent companion. He declared himself quite ready for a rapprochement
with Gennany, but only if Hitler embraced the various allies in the East
at the same time as tl1e French. Any arrangement, as far as he was con-
cerned, would be on the basis of such relations:
"It is strictly on the condition that the same assurances of peace that
you make to France be extended to our allies."
Goering put an end to these offers with a few dry words: "Always
your same ideas! In that case, nothing can be done."
Laval would go back to Paris very satisfied all the same.
But for very different reasons.
Being a politician, his first thought on any occasion was of his elec-
toral mandate. At Moscow, in payment for his signature, Laval had ob-
tained from Stalin the key that would open the door to a parliamentary
treasure: the neutrality, and even the support, of the French Communists.
Stalin, whom his brother Communists in the world served merely as
pawns, had overwhehned Laval by promising him he would give orders
to Paris for the French comrades' vote in favor of the military budget,
which was the very foundation of the government to which Laval be-
longed.
Laval's worst enemies in his constituency of Aubervilliers were the
Communists. If Stalin neutralized them, Laval's reelection would be as-
sured That promise of Stalin's, of great importance to Laval, was worth
increasing the risks of 40 million Frenchmen by throwing them into the
jaws of the Soviets.
While up to that time the Communists in France had fought with tlle
utmost violence against all "capitalist" and "reactionary" reannament,

now, on orders from Moscow, they were going t.o vote for the ~ e d
military budget that had been accursed, abhorred and abominated by
tl1em the day before.
The final declaration obtained from the Soviets by Laval was drafted
in words as plain as the frost of the R~ian steppes: "Stalin fully approves
tl1e French policy of national defense for the maintenance of her armed
forces at the level required for her security."
"If I understand you well, your excellency, commis.sar of the people,"
Laval emphasized when countersigning the communique, "this is a rec-
ommendation by Stalin t.o the French Communists." (Tabouis, op. cit.,
p. 249.)
"Just like that,,, a colleague of Laval's exclaimed, "his constituency of
Aubervilliers will vote for the war budgets. That's marvelous!" (Ibid.)
It was not just a matter of a French war budget. Far more, it was a
matter of what was in the sole interest of the USSR, the one and only fa-
therland of the Communists of all countries.
Against this purely local and provisional adherence of a handful of
Communist deputies and their constituencies, Laval's France was com-
mitted, in the event of an international conflict, t.o giving immediate assis-
tance t.o a partner of no use t.o herself.
This joining together witl1 the Soviets would inevitably draw down on
France the lightning of her neighbor, Gennany, whom any support for
Moscow, Germany's worst enemy, could not fail to exasperate.
Goering had reported his blunt dismissal of Laval at Warsaw to Hitler.
Gennany's reaction was inevitably going to be swift and very sharp.
France could not help but feel it coming. The response t.o Monsieur Laval,
the expert horse trader, would not be slow t.o arrive.
' •
•
'f
••
• I ,I
• , .· ,
... .,
/
•
Here, Hitler meets with children from the liberated Saar region at his holiday residence
Haus Wachenfeld at Obersalzberg near Be·rchtesgaden. Hitler was a powerful advo-
cate for German families. AKG-IMAGESINEWSCOMPOST/HEINRICH HOFFMAN
CHAPTER
ATALE OF TWO PACTS
itler was never hurried at a time of great decisions. Gener-

ally he left for his refuge at Berchtesgaden, paced the floor
of his drawing room for hours, gazed out the window at the
high white peaks where, legend had it, the phantom of a
crusader emperor had once upon a time appeared.
He sat on his sunny terrace and dreamed. When his decision had ma-
tured, he would clhnb into his airplane and resume his place among the
living in Berlin. Only t11en did he decide, give orders and charge ahead.
The most disturbing issue concerning the pact signed by Moscow and
France was the seemingly one-sided corrunitment made by France, in the
attached protocol, to intervene militarily on the side of the Soviets "even
if the Council of the l..€ague of Nations did not is.51.le any recommendation
or failed to come to a unanhnous decision."
On the one hand, the tenns made France wholly committed to backing
the Bolsheviks should the Soviet government find itself embroiled in any
military contest. On tl1e other, the USSR reseIVed the right to make her
oivn detemlination as to just who was the "aggressor" nation before send-
ing its military forces to support France in any future fight. That was the
only valid interpretation t11e Wilhelmstrasse could put on the pending
Franco-Soviet pact.
"At present," French historian Benoist-Mechin is prompted to remark,
"the case of a war is envisaged in which, beyond the compass of circum-
stances specified in the Treaty of Locarno, France would have not j~t
244 I Hn'LEH DEMOCRAT
the 'right but the duty to attack Gennany, in the case of Gennany being
at grips with tl1e USSR"-a 1isk obviously intolerable for any Gennan
govenunent (Benoist-Mechin, op. cit., p. 276).
After a week of 1neditation, on May 21, 1935, Hitler mounted the ros-
trmn of the Reichstag.
His tone was grave, but it was apparent fro1n the beginning tl1at he
did not intend to do anytlling drastic. He did not 1nean to end abruptly his
policy of peace in the West 'lime might-one never knew-put an end
to the lack of understanding between France and Gennany.
Besides, even if the Laval-Stalin pact had been signed in Moscow, it
had not yet been ratified in Paris. It had still to be submitted to a vote by
tl1e French parliarnent It could always be rejected there.
Hitler was fundamentally opposed to a war witll France. In his view,
such a war, a new edition of 1914-1918, would be not just an aberration
but suicide-the collective suicide of Europe.
He resolved to contain himself for as long as it was possible to do so.
Anotl1er reason to be patient: Hitler was far from being ready militar-
ily. The new Wehnnacht was still in its infancy, so to speak. To put to-
gether 36 divisions, provide them with cadres, with materiel, and with
modern training facilities, would take several years.
"Ten years!" arrogantly said the French general staff.
Hitler therefore preferred for the moment to launch another appeal for
peace--a diplomatic appeal-but contained within was also his issuing
of a dire warning.
The desire for peace, to start with: "Germany," Hitler announced,
"has accepted and by a solemn declaration to France has guaranteed
the borders as they exist following the plebiscite of the Saar.... We
have done that, just as we definitely renounce all claim to Alsace-Lor-
raine, a region for which we have fought two great wars in the past We
are convinced that we have thereby not only rendered a service to our
people, but also to the people of that border region. We wish, on our
part, to do whatever is in our power to reach a true peace and a real
friendship with tlle French people."
Next the fEtiection of any pact, such as that of the French, with Com-
munism:
"National Socialism cannot call on the Gennan people to fight for the
preservation of a system which, in our own country at least, has proven
itself to be our bitterest enemy. A commitment to peace, yes. As for as-
A TALE OF T\VO PACTS I 245
sistance on the part of the Communists in the event of war, we do not

wish it, and, for our part, we are not in a position to grant it."
And finally, the warning:
"The Franco-Russian military alliance has beyond any doubt intro-
duced an element of insecurity.... The Gennan government would not
wish to let the slightest doubt be raised as to its opinion, to wit, that it
dee1ns such military alliances incompatible with the spirit and the letter
oftl1e League of Nations Treaty." (Quotation from Hitlers speech to the
Reichstag on May 21, 1935.)
Hitler would renew that warning officially in a "memorandum" he
would send to the French government four days later, on May 25, 1935.
"Any intervention by France made in pursuance of the Franco-Soviet
Pact would be contrary to Article 16 of the League of Nations 'freaty and
w·otdd signify a violation of the Locarno Pact."
Hitler was not the only one to denounce the violation of the [1925] Lo-
carno Pact. England herself had been anxious to let it be known that she
shared Germany's opinion. Even before M. Laval had put his signature
on the pact in Moscow, the British foreign secretary, Sir John Simon, had
taken care to point out its inco1npatibility.
He had immediately sent the following telegram to his ambassador,
Clarke, in Paris:
"Make known in no uncertain tenns that England is disturbed

to see France conclude a treaty which could eventually lead to
participation in a war against Gennany under conditions that are
incompatible with paragraph II of tl1e Locarno Pact." (Benoist-
Mechin, op. cit., p. 278.)
It was thus not a n1atter of a unilateral int.erpretation of the Franco-

Russian Pact on the part of Hitler. No, the statesman principally respon-
sible for Great Britain's foreign policy was also oftl1e same opinion.
Even a detractor of Hitler such as the historian Fest could not help
admitting that the Gennan chancellor was right: "Hitler's argtunent was
not totally witl1out foundation." (Fest, op. cit., vol. II, p. 146.) 'Iranslated
into plain English, that admission means the argument was well founded.
Even the important Jewish journalist, Sauerwein, would be heard to
say in Paris: "This pact is absurd, since it obliges us French to go to the
aid of the Russians if they are attacked. Now, just tllink of tl1at What an
absurdity!" (Tabouis, op. cit., p. 293.)
Sin1on tl1e Englislunan, Fest tl1e Gennan and Sauerwein, the French
Jew, were unaniinously h1 agreement with Hitler's interpretation of the
tenns and conditions contained in tl1e Franco-Soviet treaty. What an ex-
traordinary trinity.
Later tl1e Allies would drown their disagree1nent on the pact in inter-
nlinable tangled explanations. But the Foreign Office document is there:
Even before Hitler had n1ade a move to proclaim the incompatibility of
t11e Franco-Soviet agree1nent with the Locamo Pact, the British govern-
n1ent had done so, and so signified by wire to the French government.
It remained to be seen what was going to take place in Paris. Parlia--
n1entary government has always meant dilatoriness, amendments, con-
tradictions, tergiversation, sabotage and fracases. Democratic ceremon-
ies take time. In February 1936-hence nine months after its initial sign-
ing by Communist functionaries in Moscow-the Franco-Soviet treaty
was still awaiting final ratification by that august body of French legisla-
tors-tile Chamber of Deputies. Hitler endeavored to profit by this respite
by lawlching a final appeal, a montil before tile vote, to Monsieur Fland.in,
who was head at tl1at moment of the French government.
"At the beginning of 1936," Benoist-Mechin tells us, "the Reich tries a
new diplomatic maneuver. It infonns France through the agency of its
charge d'af[aires in Paris that it is always ready to sign a non-aggression
pact with her, but will consider the ratification of tile Soviet pact by the
French parliament "as an unfriendly act toward Germany and incompat-
ible with the obligations of the Locamo Pact." (Op. cit., pp. 278f.)
Immediate reply of the French premier: "The question has already
been settled by the governments involved, and tllere is no reason to refer
to it again. Moreover, France considers herself henceforth committed
vis-a-vis the USSR." (Ibid.)
"From now on," Benoist-Mechin laconically concludes, "we are on a
dangerous downhill slope."
For all that, nothing was yet in effect. On Feb. 12, 1936, discussion of
the pact begins at the Palais Bourbon and rapidly becomes very lively,
because a number of deputies have calculated the dangers of the accord.
The French government, which in response t.o Hitler had affirmed that
the Soviet Pact was not strictly a military alliance, gives herself the lie by
receiving Gen. Tukhachevsky in Paris while the debates are still going
A TALE OF TWO PACTS I 247
'\ I ,.
- ---
_
-• -
.....
..
··•
-.
. ,~. ~
- :~-
.-
--~. ...•i!J.,
I , , ..
.
r... .. ,;
,
'
The Stresa Conference of 1935 was a meeting between the governments of Britain,
France, and Italy, supervised by Joseph Stalin and the Soviet Union, in which the
three powers made a pact to defend Austria in case of German invasion. Italy would
later withdraw from the pact in favor of Germany. Shown from left to right: Pierre
Laval, Josef Stalin, Pierre Franclin (French premier) and Ramsey MacDonald (Eng-
lish prime minister). CORBISIGETTY IMAGES
on. He discusses collaboration with Gen. Gamelin, the head of the French
anny, at great length. The collusion between these two superior officers
and privileged negotiators is public and flagrant.
For a week the debate rages in the French parliament. Then, on Feb-
ruary 19, 1936, a particularly prominent deputy, M. Taittinger, the mayor
of Paris, mounts to the platform and, to a chorus of boos from the ex-
treme left, hurls a prophetic warning at the Assembly: "The ratification of
this agreement will be considered by Germany to be a threat and will give
her cause to remilitarize the left bank of the Rhine."
Taittinger and his colleagues of the right would thereafter fight a lost
cause: the Franco-Soviet Pact would be canied on February 27, 1936 de-
spite the opposition of 164 deputies.
In the meantime a scandalous incident had occurred. Hitler decided
to make one last personal appeal to the French people on February 21,
248 I HITLEH DEMOCHAT
thus six days before tl,e treaty was put to a vote in tl,e French parlialnent
However, inunediately before its publication in France, Hitler's appeal
had been 1nade away with by tl,e French govenunent al\d kept secret
TI,e Gennan leader's 1nes.5age had been addressed in the fonn of all in-
terview granted to one of the best-known political wliters of France, M.
Bertrand de Jouvenel, all acadenlician of great reknown and a member
of a fainily of diplonrats of largely Jewish blood.
"Hitler tltinks tltat his interview coining at tllis precise moment might
tilt the balance in favor of non-ratification of the pact." (Benoist-Medlin,
op. cit., p. 284.)
The text, according to an agreement witl1 tl,e press, was to be pub-
lished witll a fanfare on tl1e n1orning of tlle 22nd of February. But, nothing
appeared in tlte French newspapers on tl1at day nor on the days follow-
ing. What had gone wrong? The minister of Foreign Affairs had simply in-
tercepted Ute interview transcript before its publication. He had been
sitting on it, holding it, he would later admit, "for examination."
"The French deputies [did] not know of the Gennall challcellor's ap-
peal in time," Benoist-Mechin writes, "because publication of the inter-
view [was) delayed for seven days, alld tlle public [was] not infonned of
it until it (was] too late." (Benoist-Mechin, op. cit., p. 279.)
We all know tl,at in a democracy, freedom of the press is sacred, alld
censorship no longer exists. Hitler would experience it in Paris: a mes-
sage to tlle French people from the Gennan head of government, yet he
would be censored for seven whole days.
Hitler's appeal to tlle French was importallt nonetlleless. Had his
words enlightened only allother 95 deputies, tl1at would have been
enough for rejection of the pro-Soviet pact. Hence tlle brazen-faced sup-
pression of its publication.
What did Hitler say?
"Today, I wish to prove to my people tllat the notion of all eternal en-
mity between France and Gefffially is absurd, tl1at we are by no means
hereditary enenlies. The Gennan people understand it. They have fol-
lowed me in an infinitely more difficult reconciliation, the reconciliation
of Gennany and Poland. . . . Now I Wallt to make a success of the same
detente with France. It is not good for people to spend tl1eir psychological
forces on fruitless hatreds."
M. Bertrand de Jouvenel had interrupted: "In Mein Kampfyou greatly
maligned France!"
A TALEOFT\VO PACTS I 249
Hitler had tl1en put his hand almost affectionately on the arm of the
French writer: "I was in prison when I wrote that book. French troops
were occupying the Ruhr. It was a time of the greatest tension between
our two countries. Yes, we were enemies. And I was with my country,
as is fitting, against yours. As I have been with my country against yours
during 4.5 years in the trenches . . . But today there is no longer any rea-
son for conflict. Do you want me to make corrections in my book as a
writer who prepares a new edition of his books? But I am not a writer-
I am a political man. My rectification? I provide it every day in my foreign
policy directed toward friendship with France. If I succeed in a Franco-
Gennan rapprochement, as I wish, that will be a reetification worthy of
me. I shall write my rectification in the great book of history."
Jouvenel had reswned his questioning: "Isn't the Franco-Soviet Pact
going to compromise the Franco-Gennan rapprochement you desire?"
Hitler had ren1ained silent for a moment. That question went to the
heart of the problem. At Paris, the vote was only seven days away. De-
liberately he entmciated his answer: "In cold fact, this more than de-
plorable pact would naturally create a new situation.
"Are you really aware of what you are doing? You are getting your-
selves involved in the diplomatic game of a power that seeks only to cre-
ate a disorder among the great European nations from which she alone
will benefit. You must not lose sight of the fact that Soviet Rusma is a po-
litical body having both gigantic armaments and an explosive revolution-
ary idea at its disposal. As a Gennan, it is definitely my duty to take such
a situation into account. Bolshevism has no chance of succeeding with
us. But there are other great nations who are less on guard against the
Bolshevik virus tl1an we are.
"You would do well," Hitler continued, "to give serious thought to my
offers of an entente. No Gennan leader has ever made such overtures to
you before. Nor such repeated overtures. And from whom do those of-
fers come? Fro1n a pacifist charlatan who has made a specialty of inter-
national relations? No, fro1n the greatest nationalist Gennany has ever
had leading her. I bring you so1netlling that no one else could ever bring
you: an entente tl1at will be approved by 90 percent of the Gennan nation,
the 90 percent who follow me!"
Speaking not to the French author, but to all of France, he said: "I beg
you to note this well, that tl1ere are decisive moments in the life of a peo-
ple. Today France can, if she wishes, put an end forever to that 'Gennan
peril' tl1at your children lean, to fear fro1n generation to generation. You
can lift tJ1e dread 1uortgage tl1at weighs on tJ1e history of France. This op-
port,ulity is given to you. If you n1ake no move to seize it., think of your
responsibility to your children. You have before you a Germany whose
people, nine-tentl\S of them, have co1nplete trust in their leader, and tl1at
leader tells you: 'Let us be friends!"' (These quotations from Hitler's mes-
sage were published in Paris Midi on Feb. 28, 1936.)
Fifty years later, so1ne Frenchn1en will retort that Hitler, by that ap-
peal, meant to lead them astray, tl1e more easily to strangle them later.
Like tl1em, historian Benoist-Mechin has asked himself: "Was Hitler
sincere in forn1ulating tl1ose proposals? There is no serious reason to
doubtit" (Op. cit., p. 283.)
Hitler's attitude in tllis respect faitllfully matched a whole series of ini-
tiatives aimed in effect at promoting this rapprochement Long before,
the chancellor of the Reich had sent von Ribbentrop to Paris for the pur-
pose of inviting M. Daladier to come and see him. In 1935, he had re-
ceived in Berlin with special honors a delegation of French war blind led
by Deputy Scapini, who was also blind. He arranged a pilgrimage of Ger-
man veterans to Douamont for the purpose of fraternizing with their far-
mer French adversaries.
This sensational interview, without precedent in international rela-
tions, Hitler had granted to M. Bertrand de Jouvenel so that it might be
transmitted immedwtely to the French public at large. And it was this
text, the repercussions of which might have been considerable, that short-
sighted politicos within the Paris government had kept under wraps dur-
ing the entire week of the parliamentary debates. But even that maneuver,
though of rare boorishness, was not enough for them.
On Feb. 28, 1936, when the vote had been taken, they would make hn-
proper use of Hitler's appeal by then turning the article over for publica-
tion to an unimportant newspaper, Paris Midi, and letting it be believed
that the Gennan leader had given the inter:view after the vote and, hence,
that he had ratified it in some manner or other.
Benoist-Mechin, analyzing the maneuver, adds: "When readers of the
chancellor's interview see the Paris Midi issue of Feb. 28, they cannot
help feeling momentarily surprised. Coming after the ratification of the
pact, Hitler's proposals have a totally different ring to them. You begin to
wonder if it isn't the signing of the pact that has led Hitler to its compo-
sition and spurred him to formulate his ever-so-friendly offers. But tl1en,
A TALE OF TWO PACTS I 251
how light it was to ratify the treaty, since it gives France both a guarantee
from Moscow and overtures from Berlin! No doubt the chancellor, re-
signing himself to the inevitable, found it the better part of wisdom to
seek reconciliation with France." (Op. cit., Ill, pp. 283 f.)
That machination, ascribable to the lowest kind of politics and carried
out at the expense of a foreign chief of state-the most important one in
Westen1 Europe-surpassed every other dirty trick Europe had known
since Versailles. It was like a direct slap in the face for Hitler.
That France was definitely embracing the Soviets had already pro-
voked a strong reaction in Hitler. But this low blow was the last straw.
Hitler exploded. He had the French ambassador, M. Fran~ois-Poncet,
summoned to his office and gave him a severe dre~ing-down:
I shall respond as one is wont to respond to a moral swindle

because I have been betrayed and mocked. My interview with
M. de Jouvenel was in no way an approval of your pact, but a final
warning against its ratification. I received Jouvenel eight days
ago. He knew very well what it was about But at Paris, and no
doubt in your embassy as well, publication of the article was de-
layed in order to deceive the French about my true intentions.
Butjust take the time to read what I said, and you will clearly see
that my proposals were not in the slightest an approval of the
Franco-Soviet pact! A France that has become the ally of the
Kremlin is no longer the France I addre~ed a week ago. You will
receive 1ny reply before long.
Ambassador Fran~ois-Poncet, ordinarily rather a blusterer, left, totally

abashed.
He knew tl1e Fuehrer. And he had no doubt that Hitler was notjust air-
ing an idle threat.
For just nine days later, Hitler was going to set his machine in motion.
On March 7, 1936, in response to the voting of tl1e Franco-Soviet Pact and
the pre~ swindle that followed it, he was going to break down the doors
of the Rhineland with one mighty kick
Hitler was a proponent of public works projects that glorified the German nation and
provided jobs for the German people. Here, he discusses the redevelopment of down•
town Berlin and the creation of a downtown area similar to the National Mall in Wash-
ington, DC, which would glorify the capital of Germany as the capital of a new German
Empire of Europe. NEWSCOM
CHAPTER
AUTHORITY AND POWER:

WHAT IT MEANT TO BE FUEHRER
eing a leader does not mean being a man who gives orders
impulsively, who takes everything upon himself, allowing no
initiative to anyone else; a man before whom his coworkers
tremble, fearing to stray so much as a hair from their mas-
ter's every whim.
Above all, being a leader does not imply you are going to do everything
yourself, to be a workaholic intent on managing the whole shebang,
knocldng yourself out 16 hours a day plowing through paperwork and
summoning coworkers who have become mere machines for carrying
out orders.
The true leader is the man who delegates a maximum of technical re-
sponsibility to his immediate fellow workers in order, before everything
else, to have time to think, to dream if need be, to let an idea mature so
that at the proper moment it can have the maximum possible impact.
And that is what Adolf Hitler, the Fuehrer, was going to be, above all
else. He would never be finicky. He would never busy himself with details.
He would content himself with the development of vaster and loftier
ideas.
Once these had taken fonn, the higher civil servants would have a free
hand, whether it was Goebbels putting together an enonnous propaganda
machine, or Roehm organizing the party's shock troops, or Schacht-an
254 I HITI.EH DEMOCRAT
adversary, no less-starting up Gennany's econo1ny once again, or Goer-

ing canying out the "four-year plan."
That was the Fuehre171rinzip, tJ1e Leadership Principle.
The colleague charged with a 1nission was absolute master in his
sphere of action. Hitler set hiln on CO\U'Se and spuITed hi.In on, but the
n1an in charge had a free hand.
A Baldur von Schirach would tluIS be able to get on witl1 his rallying
of hundreds of tl1ousands of youngsters il1to tJ1e Hille1jugend witllout
seeing Hitler otl1er tluu.1 for an hour or two fro1n thne to thne.
They were all worldng and eltjoying the saine autonomy. Each person
could develop his potentiality to the n1aximtun.
Hitler studied his great plruIS through and through, and he intended to
realize tl1em \Vitl1out being shackled. He did not want people to distract
hi.In witl1 trifles. He was the tltinker and the coordinator. The work and
the responsibility of realization were given to others.
The only penalty was for failure.
And in tl1at event you would disappear.
Actually, few would disappear. Over tl1e years, ru1yone who did not go
astray was secure in his job to the end. He could look ahead. For as long
as he worked efficiently, tl1e future was his.
It was thus with everytlung Hitler did: absolute, unquestioned auth-
ority supported by free fellow workers who were co1npletely empowered
,vitllill a prescribed area to cany out National Socialist ideas, to inscribe
them in deeds as it were. Whether they remained in their jobs or rose
higher depended solely on tl1e quality of their creativity.
Everyone gave hitnself up completely to his job, to his assignment,
which did not encroach on that of others and on which in tum no other
encroached. For five years, for 10 years he could go on developing.
The leader, the F\1ehrer, was in command, at the top of tl1e entire team.
He propelled it, but everyone in authority was master of his own sector;
he used imagination; he made decisions; he got things done.
The leader approved or disapproved, promoted or fired, on the basis
of success or failure, but only after having given everyone the means and
the time t.o produce. You were judged on tl1e evidence, on the results, but
you could achieve tile results on your own, witl1out niggling supervision,
witl1out ill-considered orders or counter orders.
Being a leader is directing a concert. The orchestra conductor is not
the drummer, nor does he play tl1e flute.
AUTHORITY AND POWER I 255
Tiu1s freed of the duty of playing all the instruments himself, Hitler
could think, which in politics, as in everything else, is fundamental.
TI1at leader is lost who no longer has the time to gather in his ideas,
to weigh them, or even to wait for tl1em to appear.
Hitler was always able to withdraw from evecything when he had to
concentrate or to unwind, to give himself, his inner nature, the time and
sunshine needed to ripen his ideas.
He might pass eight days or fifteen days apart from the world in his 'fy-
rolean refuge of Berchtesgaden, for a long time just a simple cottage,
where only the crystalline snow-clad peaks stood guard against the lucent
sky. He appeared to be doing nothing: he touched neither paper nor pen.
But then was the time of essential creation. His mind, detached from
everything, was open to everything. All of Hitler's great decisions were
born in this way, in 1neditation and solitude.
Had he been buried from dawn to dusk in wearisome paperwork, he
would never have wrought any great achievements. But freed from the in-
cidental, he was tl1e man of the e~ential.
Hitler's great powers would be nourished in that apparent dilettan-
tism. Thanks to it, he would remain free of any tether. His every idea
would be born in him at the moment of its coming to full flower. After he
had taken the thne to see tllings clearly, he would make a lightning deci-
sion. TI1en he would charge like a bull that nothing any longer frightened.
Creating a great political movement with which to conquer a nation,
then for years holding the fate of tl1e world in his hands: all that, starting
from next to nothing-a.jacket, his clodhoppers, and the fifty marks given
a demobilized veteran-must have seen1ed totally beyond achievement
Yet Hitler did achieve it
How? In tl1e first place, he po~e~ed, as everyone knows, an elo-
quence such as Germany had never experienced. That was a tremendous
asset He sent crowds into a trance and was thereby an irresistible en-
chanter.
Moreover, he had witllin hilnself an innate sense of autl1ority. He didn't
have to work at it He was born to his calling, as others are born to music
or have it in tl1eir nature to paint or write poetry. On the 29th of Septem-
ber 1921, sweeping aside the envious, the timid souls and the unimagina-
tive, he took charge of his party and was thenceforth its absolute
commander: the Fuehrer.
The party in those days consisted of only a few thousand members
all told. But he would act to win over ten thousand times as many more.
A~t hu1na11 host was awaiting him out there.
Witll only rudilnentary means at his disposal, he would achieve runaz-
ing results, forcing people to pay attention to hhn.
At each of his n1eetings tlle rickety old trucks of his first adherents
went up and down the streets creating an enonnous uproar. Flags marked
witl1 tl1e Hooked C~ were unfurled and swirled like so many suns.
Leaflets rained down upon the passersby. Insofar as he could, Hitler more
and n1ore endeavored to stir up the crowds. He organized bands to tramp
up and down tl\e streets with all brass instruments blaring.
Who tile devil is this Hitler, the passersby, often dumbfounded by this
aggressive advertising, would ask themselves, then wind up going to see
what was happening in Hitler's meeting, held perhaps in a simple coffee-
house or a grandiose amphitheater. At the end of half an hour, they would
be standing on a chair, screaming and cheering.
Before the 30th ofJanuary, 1933, 18 million Germans would be climb-
ing onto their seats that way. ·
Anation is made up of simple people, whether they are bank employ-
ees or peasants working in the field.
And the working masses are roughly half of the whole.
Hitler wanted to reconcile the notions of nation and society, and so he
had to reach those masses, to enlighten them, reshape them and explain
to tl\em tl\at only his fonnula for cooperation of the classes could bring
tl\e people out of the morass of their mediocrity.
The people of Germany in 1921 were a fief of Marxism. The latter had
gone, since 1918, from one revolution to another, doing nothing but shed-
ding blood and increasing disorder. In their most moderate form the
Marxist parties had done nothing but flounder. They had discredited
tllemselves by accepting the dikflLt of Versailles but still remained aggres-
sive. Sensing the people's decreasing confidence in themselves, they
sought to maintain it by means of violence and intransigence.
Hitler, who was now emerging as a rival, however slender his influ-
ence might be as yet, was the one man who must at all cost be prevented
from getting his message heard.
The middle classes were no problem, no danger there: at the sight of
ten or twelve Red bruisers, they would quietly slip away.
But Hitler was another story. He had begun to attract people: and
among his few thousand supporteIS, many (a third) were workera. It was
AUTI IORITY AND POWEil I 257
Hitler was a speaker of profound power, who used the newly developing mediums of
radio and film to bring his message of German unification and empowerment to all of
the German people. Here, Hitler speaks to the people at a political rally during the rise
to power of German National Socialism.
beco1ning iinperative to counter hin1, whether by jeering, by coarse deli-

sion, or by force. He had to be squashed like a flea while he was still no
more tl1an a flea
TI1at battle to the death tl1at Marxism declared against Hitler was ex-
actly what Hitler was seeking.
Far froin fearing it, he wanted the confrontation, so that the people
might be thejudge. However weak he might have been, he felthin1Selfto
be tl1e stronger. He did not dodge the fight; he provoked it. He patten1ed
his n1ethods precisely after tl1ose of his enemies. The latter, as opposed
to the nliddle class, had always sought to impress and attract the public
by de1nonstrations of power.
Hitler would always be right on their heels, swiping the color of their
flags, exactly copying the crude appeal of their placards, going with his
partisans right tlrrough the districts that were n1ost Red, the intangible
bastions of which tl1e Marxists were so jealous and so proud.
Hitler's advertising tn1cks and blaring bands showed up in the places
where the Red dictatorship was absolute. It was bravado. But at last peo-
pie began to realize tllat Marxis1n wasn't tl1e only thing around.
Hitler himself tllus had tlle opportunity to study from up close the
con1bat 1netl1ods of the socialists and tl1e Co1mnunists he meant to elim-
inate using precisely tJ1eir own tactics.
"I have lean1ed a great deal fron1 tl1e Marxists," he would assert. "I
freely adnlit it. Not fro1n tl1eir boring social doctrine and their historical
n1aterialisn1, that tissue of absurdities. But their methods have instruct.ed
1ne. I have taken pains to detennine just how hesitantly these small
nrlnds, tl1ese shopkeepers and tl1ese bureaucrats began. All National So-
cialis1n is tl1ere witlun it See for yourselves. The new means used in po-
litical combat were invented in tl1eir essentials by tile Marxists. I had only
to borro,,, tl1em and bring tl1em into focus to have at our disposal every-
tlung we lacked. All I had to do was to pursue logically the attempts in
which Social De1nocracy had failed ten times over. National Socialism is
what Marxism could have been if it had broken tile absurd and artificial
ties that bound it to a democratic order."
Marxism was stubborn and stuck to a few elementary key ideas which
it hammered home incessantly. It struck witll tile blows of a pile driver.
It was tough and at tile same time bold. Hitler meant to be tougher and
even bolder. In sum, he would defeat Marxism with Marxism.
He would go so far as to enroll many young Hitlerites in the schools
for socialist and Communist cadres in order to learn tile adversary's ar-
guments and tactics. His men, instead of shunning the Marxist meetings,
would tum up at them without a tie and more or less slovenly dressed.
Hitler would combat Marxism as an enemy when he had thoroughly
learned its every tllought and every method.
Hitler also immediately understood that the fight against Marxism
would be impossible unless he had a powerfully structured organization
at his disposal.
The "Reds" were numerically very strong, a hundred times more so
than he, but tlleir power was diffused, with little direction or poorly led
by incompetent brawlers.
For Hitler, assembling a tight organization was the first order of tile
day. He abandoned the miserable gloomy premises of Anton Drexler and
the oilier founders who were frightened by his "follies." It was not yet the
"Brown House," but it was big. Work could be done in several offices.
Not a red cent to buy furniture? Hitler made an appeal to his people:
bring a chair, a table, some shelves, a filing cabinet from your home. That
same afternoon the new premises at No. 38 Comelius.strasse were all set
Cost to the movement: not one penny. In these suitable quarters, the com-
mand would be able to work, to organize and to multiply the centers of
action and create cells in large numbers.
There, one inflexible rule would dominate Hitler's decisions: not to
create any sections ootil a true local leader was available for that purpose.
Good men led by a dunce or a spineless person grow discouraged and
let down: the section dies, having done more bad than good. On the other
hand, a young leader with the soul of a lion will tum sheep into lions. The
organization of the Hitler movement was prudent and realistic. They
didn't put up the building until they were sure of the foundation.
Hitler put a lot of time into it But in a few years he would have the best
structured network a European political organization had ever possessed.
His victory would be due in good part to his flawless planning. In time
the country would be divided into thousands of cells, blocks, streets, dis-
tricts, toWM, regions, provinces. In the MWlich central headquarters there
was a file card for every last member, and it could be located in a second.
The most modem American management would have done no better.
"Hitler's political talent," Maser, the historian, admits, "is revealed from
the very first weeks of his activity in the party, where in a very short time
he created a powerful and respected organization."
"Such an enterprise," the author continues, "could not very well be
run by Hitler without the assistance of an experienced and well-trained
team: "From the beginning of his political career, he endeavored system-
atically to set up the organization he would need to realize his plans. His
· party was run in the manner of a Prussian school at the time of the Ser-
geant-King. Every member of the party was bound to obey like a soldier
the orders of his leaders. The National Socialist partY, which was organ-
ized like an army from 1921 on, knew nothing of putting things to a vote,
of discussions, or objections. After 1921, Hitler played the part of the all-
powerful dictator of his party."
He would always cling fiercely to this monolithic organization without
which his fight would often have come down to a game of skirmishes.
Certain sudden threats-when it was necessary to bring to bear the
power of this implacably organized authority in all its weight-made it
clear that without this structure, in moments difficult to get over or times
of great temptation, the movement would have been left to drift
On no occasion did Hitler ever allow anyone at all to join the party
260 1 IIITLEU OEMOCHAT
witJ,out submitting himself unconditionally to this ligid discipline. No

group similarly inclined could be ad1uitted into his organization without
agreeing to complete absorption. One leader. One tn1th. Without a kinglet
on either his left or his right.
Even s01neone like Julius Streicher, who had put together a nation-
alist 1novement in Franconia of a considerable size, and who in the begin•
ning had fought pas.5ionately against Hitler, con1pletely subnutted like a
trooper. But a dazzled trooper. One day-on Jan. 22, 1922-he heard
Hitler speak. He was transported. Benu1nbed, he explained:
"I saw tlus man, after a speech of three hours, radiant and dripping
witl, sweat. Someone nearby believed he saw a halo around lus head, and
I felt an indefinable son1etlung. An inner voice ordered n1e to arise, and I
went to the platfonn to deliver the movement I had created into his
hands."
It was only in tlus way tl,at Hitler made alliances.
Everyone was free to decide, but tl1e autl1ority was not shared. This
total autl,ority would be tl1e ultimate weapon of lus victory. There was
still anotl,er fonn of protection they still had to be able to tum to: force.
"The idea of fighting is as old as life itself," Hitler often repeated.
They would not have to pick tllis fight.
The Gennan Marxists had always been very intolerant The had never
conceded liberty to anyone but tl1emselves. The Rote Fahne of May 30,
1920 wrote in so n1ai1y words: "The proletariat clailns for itself the liberty
of assembly. It n1ust be denied to its enemies."
Anyone who did not think like the Marxists was a heretic.
The world bastion of Marxism, the [former] USSR, has proven it a
tllousand tunes. Whetl,er it was a question of the doctrinaire Lenin of
1917 or the brutal Stalin, victor in World War II, anyone who was not in
accord with tllem found lumself in the cellars of the Cheka, or perhaps ad-
miring Russian scenery from tlle top of a gibbet, or eating rats caught at
night in tlle latrines of a frozen camp in U1e Siberian wilderness.
And Hitler committed the crime not only of not being a Marxist but of
being fw1dainentally anti-Marxist by resorting to the very tactics of Marx-
ism. As a matter of fac~ tlle fury of the Reds didn't trouble him at all. He
even lay in wait for them to provide proof that their rule of terror had
come to an end and that he was firmly detennined to oppose Marxist ter-
rorism with an implacable counterterroris1n. It was tl1e only real solution
if loyal citizens were to be pennitted to live free.
To submit to the law of the hoodlwns was to give up defending liberty.

You don't extend your hand to enemies like that, as so many simple-
tons do tl1ese days: you use their own methods and put them out of their
misery.
Hitler would not have long to wait for an occasion to show the people
tlmt he didn't capitulate to the savage intolerance like the others, but that
he faced up to it, even counterattacked, and that he won.
The first confrontation took place on Nov. 5, 1921, only a few days
after he had been recognized as the "Fuehrer," and four days after the
move to the new premises on Corneliusstrasse.
Up to that moment the Marxists still knew very little of Hitler's ex-
ceptional gifts, having scarcely botl1ered his meetings. Once a trouble--
maker had called Hitler an ape. That wasn't serious. But on Nov. 5, 1921
it was going to be altogether different. The extremists of tl1e left had
decided it was necessary to have done with this troublesome beginner.
His staff for maintaining order was still weak. Ruining his meeting
would be rather a diversion.
It very nearly was just that At a quruter to eight in the evening Hitler
entered the vast hall of the Hojbrauhaus. His opponents had occupied
tile terrain before the bulk of tl1e regular audience had come in. The Com-
munists held all the strategic points.
All in all, Hitler could count on only about fifty supporters to maintain
order in that huge conununity hall. He hastily gathered them all togetiler:
"For tile first time you're going to show your fidelity to the movement
in a pitched battle. I don't want any of you leaving the hall unless you're
dead. I'll personally tear the insignia off any coward. You are to respond
instantly if anyone attempts to make trouble. I intend to remain on the
platfonn to the end. Are any of you going to desert me?"
The clash crune in ahnost no time.
Hitler had begun his speech as if the Marxist threat gave him no con-
cern. TI1en one of the ringleaders jumped up on a chair and called for the
attack
These socialists and Communists had accumulated hundreds of
stoneware mugs fro1n the Hojbrauhaus ahead of time: these now flew
tlrrough tl1e air like shells. People were howling and yelling, making an in-
femal racket But at that very mo1nent Hitler's fifty bold and detennined
young men rushed into action.
They weren't very many, to be sure. Only their courage could save
them. And their esp1it de co1ps; for they went into action in s1nall groups
of four or five always helping each otl1er. They spared no one. With slash-
ing blows of tl1eir anny belts tl1ey bloodied the faces of the troublemak-
ers, who fell back, startled. They pitched into tl1e1n again and drove them
bleeding to tlle exit
There was a crackling of gunfire. Then flight At the end of twenty-five
nlinutes tl1ere wasn't a single Marxist left in the hall, which was now lit-
tered with hw1dreds of broken beer mugs and spattered witl1 blood.
The tlU'Ong of people who had not been able to enter surged in and
cheered Hitler, while his young defenders who were iajured were led
away to the hospital.
Resounding proof had just been given that the Marxists were no
longer the masters of the public halls, that their terror had been countered
with violence equal to their own, and that at last they had found them-
selves facing an adversary who wouldn't be stopped and whose support-
ers would die for him if necessary.
Hitler had not sought that confrontation. The Marxists had provoked
it. But the two-fold lesson had been exemplary: Marxism no longer owned
the streets and public halls.
The matter was not going to be limited to this tough settling of ac-
counts.
Hitler intended that henceforth any such Red attacks would no longer
be met by fifty volunteers charging in at the risk of getting themselves all
killed, but by a strong and seasoned body of men, disciplined, used to
fighting, ready for defense and attack as well if it were necessary to fall
on the enemy first
It is from that day we can date the birth of the famous SA: the "Storm
Troopers": the Sturmabteilung.
The leftist parties had no right to complain. They were the ones who
had been troublemakers first And now they were going to have the SA,
growing ever stronger, right on their heels without respite.
Every blow would be answered by a blow. And often 10 or 20 blows.
At the outset Goering commanded these protection units in accor-
dance with Hitler's Fuehrerpri,nzip that all posts be filled by leaders who
would then be truly responsible.
Goering was the most celebrated German flyer swviving from World
War L His "von Richthofen" squadron alone had downed 400 enemy
planes in combat. Around his neck he wore Germany's most famous dee-
AUTHOIUTY ANO POWER I 263
oration: the Order of Merit

He had heard Hitler speak one day and had belonged to him from that
tilne on. He had a powerful mind and an iron flsl He would be the creator
of tl1e SA Witllin just a few montllS he would make it the battering ram
of the National Socialists.
Later he was succeeded by the absolute prototype of all tough char-
acters, Ernst Roehm, a hero of the war of 1914-1918. Roehm had had half
of his face torn off in the war. His nose was an artificial one tilat had been
put togetl1er for him from pieces of flesh from his thigllS. In Munich he
had a ratl1er important role in the Army as tile handler of tile secret funds
of Anny Security, very closely linked to tile autl1orities and often even
having an advantage over them.
Hitler and Roehm did not know each other until several 1nonths after
the future F\1ehrer had taken up his party activities. They had become
comrades. Roehm would become one of the very few men to use the fa-
miliar form of address with tile Fuehrer. They would clash one day be-
cause they did not at all see eye to eye on the subject of the SA; Roehm
wanted to make it into an enonnous proletarian army after the manner
of tl1e Red Army; Hitler, on the contrary, saw it only in the role of a force
for maintaining order.
"Boxing and jajit.su," he said, "are of more use to tile SA than training
in sharp-shooting. Our goal is not the creation of a sham army. Our goal
is the conquest of tile state. Everything else will follow."
In Hitler's view, the Reichswehr was to remain Germany's true army,
superlatively trained in strategy and tactics, and possessing a century-old
tradition. It would be increased in size and above all transformed, when
the time was rigl1t, by a massive recruitment of young 1nen infused with
National Socialism. Hitler was not in a hurry; Roehm was. Hitler had faith
in the old army•s ideas ofservice and honor; Roehm did not. In any event,
in 1921 it was not an immediate proble1n. The fighting was carried on
solely in the meeting halls and in the street, not at the border.
Roehm, spurred on by Hitler, vigorously and grandly developed and
enlarged tlle SA Eagles and standards designed by Hitler that were wor-
thy of tl1e Roman Empire. Unifonns tilat each volunteer had to pay for out
of his own pocket, often at a considerable personal sacrifice. A striking
annband tl1at could be recognized in the street from 100 yards away:
"The Hooked Cross on tl1e steel hehnet. / Our armband: red, white, black.
/ Our name: Attack Group Hitler."
264 I HlTI.EH DEMOCRAT
At tllat titne, too, the Hitler salute was inaugurated: the upraised ann
of tile ancient Gennans, outstretched in a gesture of fraternity; it was the
greeting, too, of Lutller at tl1e Diet of Wonns.
As for tl1e party, it had dropped the old designation of DNP to become
tl1e NSDAP. Added to it ,vas tlle rallying cry: Heil Hitler. Friends and en-
enlies botl1 lo1ew with who1n they were dealing.
The SA would quickly be six thousand strong.
They would lo1ow countless battles.
TI1e n1ost notable set-to would be one in the city of Coburg on Oct. 14,
1922 that pitted tllen1 against the Marxists, who had up to then believed
tlleniselves to be tile n1asters of the city.
Hitler had been invited to "German Day" of the nationalist parties.
TI1ese parties consisted for tl1e most part-unlike tile NSDAP-of ratiler
tilnorous petty bourgeois and trades people who set high value on the
glass of tileir store windows. The Marxists had spitefully threatened them
witl1 street incidents, so they were fearful to begin with.
Now, here was Hitler arriving at the station. The organizers imme-
diately asked him not to parade his troops through the city in a column,
not to wave flags and above all to silence the band. Hitler had not
brought along eight hundred strapping fellows of the SA by special
train from Munich to have them enter Coburg like frightened rabbits.
With the band in the lead-forty-two musicians blowing up a storm-
the eight hundred SA stalwarts, led by Hitler, went through the city
from one end to the other.
The Marxists were struck breathless. Not one of them dared to make
a move or raise a finger during the parade.
In the evening, with the arrival of darkness, they meant to take their
revenge. They surrounded the barrack buildings where the SA were
lodged and bombarded them with a great number of stones. The SA caine
stonning out, counterattacked, gave them a good licking and put the pack
of them to flight.
The following day was the big day of the confrontation. Dawn found
the town plastered with posters calling the proletariat to riot
Hitler had foreseen the move and had sent for reinforcements: another
700 members of the SA. He definitely meant to hold the meetillg in the
Great Square as planned. His fifteen hundred men, with flags flying and
trombones blaring, started through the streets. The appeal of the Reds
had met with only relative success. The Marxists demonstrators were
AUTHORITY ANO POWER I 265
only a few hundred in nwnber. At their first cat.calls the SA fell upon them,
gave tl1em a tl1rashing, and hurled them out of the Great Square within a
n1atter of minutes. The public cheered.
The final act of this colorful hand-to-hand fighting would talce place at
tl1e railroad station itself.
There, the Communist railway men declared that tlley would prevent
tl1e SA return train from leaving for Munich. Hitler at once seized the ring-
leaders and sat them down, closely watched, in the cars and perched on
tl1e locomotive itself.
"Well, now," he said to tlle railway men, "you don't want to run the
train? Okay, we'll run it ourselves. But since we aren't very familiar with
the controls, it might just derail. You're for equality? Perfect This way
we'll all go together."
Manifestly, the idea of committing suicide in Hitler's company didn't
seem very enchanting to the Marxist leaders. The railway men wisely re-
sumed their regular places. By night, everyone was back at Munich,
Hitler, tl1e fifteen hundred SA men and the forty-two musicians. The battle
of Coburg would quickly become part of the National Socialist legend.
Courage pays. Coburg would be the first city in Gennany to give Hitler an
absolute electoral majority.
At times the confrontations turned out badly. On Aug. 9, 1921, a Mu-
nich separatist, Otto Ballestedt, imagined he would make a speech and be
acclaimed for proposals he had introduced beforehand relative to the
constitution of federal States of South Gennany and the repudiation of all
Berlin authority.
To Hitler, the Marxists were not the only enemies of the Reich; the
separatists were just as much so.
The said Ballestedt had no more than appeared on the rostrum than
Hitler charged onto the platfonn with two comrades. He sparred with the
orator before the entire audience and ousted him to the accompaniment
of a din from among the gathering.
"It's okay, it's okay," Hitler calmly declared, halting the row. "We've
achieved our goal. Ballestedt won't speak any longer."
He would not speak any longer, but the police would speak in his
stead. They arrested Hitler. He would be incarcerated for 33 days.
Gennany went from violence to more violence. Erzberger, who had
gotten the Treaty of Versailles signed, a man little praiseworthY, compro-
mised and sullied by speculations ("he doesn't have any clean clothes
266 I IIITI.EH 1lEMOCHAT
lefl," said Undersecretary of State von Rheinbaben), was ldlled in a wa-

tering place in Baden, at 'litisee.
As for Scheidenmnn, he had acid thrown at hhn and barely escaped.
TI1e fate of Ratl1enau, the nlinister offoreign affairs, is yet 1nore tragic.
He was a Jew. On June 24, 1922, right in tl1e ntlddle of Berlin, he was cut
down in his o,vi1 car by n1achine-gun fire. And to n1ake sure there was no
nlistake, he ,vas fulished off witl1 a grenade thrown at ltls feet.
Hitler had nothing to do with tl1ese criines. He was in prison in Munich
at tl1e tirne Ratl1enau ,vas stn1ck down. He vigorously condemned all
such atte1npts.
It would later be la1owi1 that tl1ese 1nurderous attacks had been tl1e
work of tl1e "Consul" organization tl1at had no connection with National
Socialis1n.
But tl1e occasion offered too beautiful an opporturuty to leap on Hitler
and destroy his 1noven1ent: on the order of the Reichstag, the NSDAP
suddenly found itself banned in Prussia, in Saxony, in Thuringia and in
Hrunburg. By virtue of the sacrosanct principle of democracy, tl1e pro-
tector ru1d guarantor of libe1ty, you may be sure.
From tl1at day on, a public speech by Hitler would no longer be pos-
sible. Not a single one of his headquarters, fro1n tl1e No1th Sea to Koenigs-
berg, would be open either. Was tl1e entire National Socialist organization
going to collapse? Hitler was a man of luck: Bavaria, always so1nething
of a rebel, bridled and refused to implement the ban.
A large part of the population of Munich was for Hitler. And for the
time being Hitler was going to concentrate his activities tl1ere.
Bavaria unfortunately was not the Reich.
Moreover, soon there, too, everything possible would be done to op-
pose the young Fuehrer.
But meanwhile, that powerful province offered him a big springboru·d,
and Hitler climbed upon it. From there he would be able to plunge deep
into the waters of destiny.
CHAPTER
EVENTS LEADING UP TO THE

'BEER HALL PUTSCH' FUSILlADE
s an instigator of coups d'et,at, Adolf Hitler was a novice. Was

a coup d'etat even what he really wanted in November of
1923? He had been thinking of it, he said straightforwardly,
ever since the day when he got out of the Pasewalk hospital.
ut he had to have the means for it. On Nov. 8, 1923, he did
not have the means. All he wanted that night was to turn Munich-with-
out resorting to violence-into a tremendous instnnnent of presmi.re ca-
pable of iJ.upelling Bavaria to a national march on Berlin, not to break up
the state, but to save Germany.
Hitler was little known in Berlin in 1923, though more so perhaps than
one might have thought. The sad thing was that on the night following
his disaster, more than 600 syinpathizers would be loudly de1nonstrating
in the major centers of the capital, with cries of Hell Hitler.
The anny that 1night have opposed Hitler at Berlin was not very
strong. And by chance, the guard battalion on duty tJ1at night was made
up only of Bavarians. All the saine, it was a big bite to swallow. Hitler was
deceiving himself politically. Berlin was the main Marxist fief of the Reich.
Gen. von Luttwitz and the high-ranking official, Kapp, had learned that
to their cost in 1921: they were in control of the city for four days, only to
be reduced to iJ.npotence by a general strike that destroyed tl1em.
When it was all over, the socialists and Communists were stronger
tt,m, ever. TI,ere were 34,000 card~an;1iJ.lg 1ne1nbers of either the Social-
ist or tlte Conuntntist Patty holding down key jobs in tlte Berlin adminis-
tration alone.
It ,vould later be seen how Joseph Goebbels-a born agitator, bold, a
1nost popular orator, biting, sarcastic, fanatical-would spend five years
capturing the worker bastions tltere one by one and making National So-
cialism the pre1nier party in the capital of the Reich. In 1923, it was too
soon. Hitler would alinost certainly have broken his teeth on tl1e bone of
Berlin, even tl,ough he had success momentarily in Munich. His failure
,vas in realicy a fortunate tlung for his career. Before taking pOSSC$iOn of
tlte State, it was absolutely essential that he first conquer the German
people. It was only on their shoulders tl1at he could come to power.
There were also flaws in tlle Munich situation, not all of them Hitler's
fault The hurried change in tlle program had forced him suddenly to
throw overtlle plan meantfortlle lltll of November and improvise an at-
tack on the 8tl1 of November. It was too quickly prepared. Certain gross
errors were thus committed, which Hitler would no doubt have avoided
if he'd had more time available in which to completely change the basis
of an operation originally intended for three days later.
In tlle first hours of tlle putsch, everything had gone marvelously. The
first to get under way had been Ernst Roehm and a few hundred storm
troopers whom he had very discreetly gatllered togetller at the Uiwen-
briiu. All of a sudden Roehm announced the big news to his troops, that
Hitler had just "caught" all the important men of Munich: State President
Knilling, Commissioner-General Gustav von Kahr, Gen. Otto von Los.sow,
Chief of Police Hans von Seisser and all tlle bigwi~ of the administration
and of finance and commerce. The fishing boat was full. All of tllem were
joining the revolution. Hitler had become tlle political leader of it, or, in
other words, the dictator.
This tremendous news provoked an unprecedented uproar among
those hearing it Many soldiers had been sitting at tables with the storm
troopers. They now all tore off the republican and separatist insignia from
their unifonns, jumped up on the tables and chairs, hugged one anotller
and sang the national antllem at the top of their voices.
They had to go int.o action at once. Preceded by a tllundering band (in
the middle of the night), cheered and then followed by many Munich cit-
izens who had jumped from their beds in all hast;e, Roehm's centurions
proceeded triumphantly through the principal streets of tlle t.own. "The
EVENTS LEADING UP TO THE 'BEER HALL PUTSCH' FUSILLADE I 269
enthusiasm of jubilant onlookers was heady," noted historian John

Toland.
Adetail which must not be omitted: during the 15 hours that preceded
the ultimate massacre, not a single untoward incident occurred in the
streets anywhere, not even in the districts most subject to Marxist prop-
aganda.
It is obvious that Hitler, in 1923, had already had a profound effect on
public opinion in Munich. TI1e reports made by tl1e police after the events
are unanimous on that point There was not a single dust-up in Munich be-
tween the socialists, Communists, and the National Socialists. Not even
a punch thrown by an individual. The National Socialists paraded through
evecy street in Munich as thougll rigllt at home, flags flying, bands making
an enormous din in the nigllt. Roehm did not have to take any precau-
tionacy measures. On Hitler's orders, sent by motorcycle, Roehm went
with his centurions to the War Ministcy, tl1e seat of tl1e militacy authority.
No one had to fire a shot After a few brief explanatory words, Roelun
took possession of the premises.
The ministry building was immediately transformed into the nlilitary
center of the National Socialists and reinforced without delay by hun-
dreds of cadets, the elite of the army, who arrived burning with patriot-
ism. Other cadets had meanwhile taken possession of the police
headquarters, the seat of the civil authority.
The finances had been immediately assured. A Munich printing house
owned by a Jewish firm belonging to tl1e Masson Parcus Brothers had in
its shops, on the nigllt of the putsch, the goveminent reseives, a fabulous
fortune, at least theoretically: 14,650,000 billion marks-not very n1uch in
reality at a time when a sandwich at the greasy spoon cost hundreds of
millions.
Certain bills in this depository bore the fantastic figure of 50 billion
marks-enough to purchase half of Germany in 1914. h1 this printing es-
tablish1nent, as everywhere, Gennan order and discipline would reign
unbroken: on that night, with the revolution in full swing, the Parcus
brothers simply asked for a receipt, which tl1ey received imn1ediately.
This demand did not astonish any assailant Max Amann, the strictest fin-
ancier of tl1e party, signed tl1e receipt
If the revolutionaries had requisitioned a bag of french fries, tl1ey
would in the same manner have given the vendor a receipt in due form,
perfectly handwritten. This wasn't Gem1any for nothing. At that hour-
it ,vas past nudnight-evecything was going well, whether it concerned

political autl1ority, nlilitary authority, or a sin1ple question of adminis-
tration. "In point of fact," Gennan historian Joachim Fest would con-
clude, "tl1e chances of the undertaking were not bad at all. Just as was
noted in tl1e forenoon, public opinion was absolutely inclined in favor
of Hitler and of the 'ka.inptbund.' At the town hall, as well as on the
balconies of nun1erous important buildings and houses, tlle swastika
flag had been raised."
An incident tllen occurred tllat was apparently trifling, but which
,vas going to have fatal consequences a few hours later. The former
autonomist leaders who had rallied to Hitler's support-von Kahr, von
Lossow and Seisser-had been committed to the care of Gen. Luden-
dorff. It was getting late. The gentlemen said they were fatigued by tlle
lateness of the hour and by the emotion. They desired to go to bed. In
Gennany in those days, a conscientious bourgeois put his nightcap on
his head at 9:00 in the evening.
What else was left forthem-Kahr, Lossow and Seisser-to do? They
had publicly given their approval. They weren't going to run through the
streets after the drummers and bass drums. Why, they asked Ludendorff,
don't you let us go to bed? It was 10:30 P.M. They gave Ludendorff their
word of honor that they would remain true to the oath they had sworn
three hours earlier.
Gen. Ludendorff, for all his craftiness, did not guess what they were
up to. For him, they had sworn fidelity, they were military men as he was,
and their word was enough for him.
It should not have been enough for him. These candidates for the pil-
lory had already gone back on their word a month before: Kahr, who had
sworn fidelity to the Constitution, had rejected it; Lossow, who had given
the Reichswehr his oath to be a disciplined soldier, had rebelled.
Having forfeited their honor once, why would they have had any scru-
ples about forfeiting it a second time, about trampling on a public com-
mitment a second time? Ludendorff, along with Hindenburg, was the
most glorious military leader of World War L He trusted his two associates
and the colonel and amiably shook hands with them. Good night. They
would see one another the next day.
A few rninut.es later Hitler reappeared. He was appalled at seeing that
the three birds had flown. He was very nearly seized with panic, for if
these three thieves, once on the loose, were able to come out against the
EVENTS LEADING UP TO THE 'BEER HALL PUTSCH' FUSILLADE I 271
tl1en triumphant revolution, an enonnous backlash could smack him right

in the face. With a great deal of tact, Max Erwin von Scheubner-Richter
explained to Ludendorff what he had perhaps set in motion. The general
treated him with scorn. To suspect an officer of disloyalty seemed to him
tl1e absolute crime: "I forbid you to question the word of a Gennan offi-
cer." Meanwhile, the officer who was "above suspicion" and the "lieu-
tenant of the monarchy" had disappeared into the night.
Betraying his word as a general was certainly infamous enough in it-
self. And Lossow hesitated before doing it. He would be made to flip-flop
by three of his colleagues after he had gotten back to his own office.
Three generals were there, as a matter of fact, with the now forgotten
names of Darrer, Ruith and Kress. Three military men steeped in con-
fonnity. They took it upon themselves to plague von Lossow with their
warnings and soon had him vacillating. Already, on their own, they had
alerted the outlying garrisons at Augsburg, Passau and Landshut without
von Lossow's authorization. And without having wished it, he was com-
mitted. He thought a moment of his oath to Ludendorff. Was he going to
go back on it, or not?
He caved in. And since Hitler and his men might fall upon him and
give him no alternative but to forswear himself a third time, he left his
office and took refuge in one of the barracks. As for Kahr, he really had
wanted to go to bed. He had just been told that a detachment of cadets
was coming and would occupy his commissioner's office at any moment
Like Lossow, he ran to the barracks of the 19th Infantry Regiment, the
only barracks he could still count on.
Why? Because a catastrophe had occurred there.
Contrary to some ossified calculating generals, the soldiers and
young officers had for the most part followed the National Socialists in
their revolt.
Hitler's centurions had made the round of tile barracks without any
special incident. However, it had been neces.5arY t.o modify arrangements
quickly on the 8th of November. An important operation had been neg-
lected: the seizing at the very first moment of the means of communica-
tion, wireless telegraphy and telephone. Hitler ought t.o have made that a
priority operation. With that under his control, Hitler could have com-
pleted his revolution without a hitch that same night
These communication networks neglected by the putschists were left
in the hands of their regular operatives, for none of the putschists had
2i2 I l llTI.EH DEMOCRAT
even gotten into that section of the barracks. Cutting off co1nnntnications
bet"'ecn tltis center and tlte outside could have been achieved in a trice.
Tite fact that Hitler had not ordered tl1is done is one n1ore proof tl1at he
did not wish to unpose his coup d'etat by force. After having won over to
his operation tl1e tltree pests of the Biirgerbrau, he was certain he would
have Ute voluntary support of the population, as evidenced by the inune-
diate plebiscite of tl1e street
He could have taken over any of tl1e barracks; but he had on tile con-
trary forbidden any violence. He wished to see tl1e anny unite behind him
in complete fraternity. Hitler would not force anyone to give assistance
against his will. Tilis noninterference was allnost conlical: in one room of
tl1e barracks of tl1e 19th Infantcy Regiment, which were also occupied by
Roelun's militia, leaders of the putsch were enthusiastically conferring,
while on the other side of tlle partition wall tl1e military radio was in full
operation. l.o.$ow, flabbergasted by tllis miracle, was going to be able to
n1ake use of it as he pleased for an hour before tile Hitler detachment oc-
cupying the barracks had any idea of its existence and cut off its use.
In the n1eantime Losoow had dispatched tile order to neighboring gar-
risons to send reinforcements. At the sa.tne time he had been able to let
the pres5 agencies know that he was rescinding his adherence to the coup
d'etat and that any of the military who supported the putsch would be
charged witl1 treason. Witl1 that spurring llim on, Kahr came back to life
and outlawed the National Socialist Party and issued a decree banning the
party newspaper and confiscating all its assets. By the time Hitler's men
became aware of the use by their opponents of the radio trans1nitter they
had all failed to note, the damage was done. All von Lossow's orders and
counter orders had been sent
CHAPTER
HITLER'S PUTSCH OF NOV. 9, 1923
een from a distance, Adolf Hitler's putsch of Nov. 9, 1923

seemed an absurdity, a rash impulse at the wrong time. That is
exactly what it was. Coups d'etat were very fashionable in Ger-
1nany after the great dive of 1918. Who hadn't given it a try?
Every region of Gennany in those years, or even in those
months, had known its coup d'etat, almost the way every infant sooner or
later got chicken pox.
Those who didn't attempt a coup dreamed of doing it. Thousands of
old war rifles were aimed in every direction. It was the left, moreover,
that had set the style of these coups d'etat. On Nov. 9, 1918, it will be re-
membered, the socialist.s and Comrnunist.s had revolted against the con-
stitutional regime in force quite illegally at two-hour intervals, without a
Reichstag vote of any kind and without consulting the electorat.e.
Friedrich Ebert, the leader of the Social Dernocrat.s and fonner proletar-
ian, had made his coup d'etat in a frock coat, opening up a window of the
parliament building and proclaiming the republic. Beyond any law, he
overturned not only a government, but the constitutional system of the
state, the monarchy of Frederick the Great of the 18th century and that
of Wilhelm I, who had proclaimed the unity of Gennany at Versailles on
the 18th of January of 1871.
Acrimson socialist who anived in a car with a red flag in his lap was
all it took to kick the constitution into the street, and the imperial regime
at the same thne. This coup d'etat was hardly over before the Spartacists
(Conunwli.sts and Conuuwli.stsyinpathizers) had made another one. Tili.s

ti1ne their leader, Karl Liebknecht, had proclaimed the Red revolution
front the top of tl1e stairway of the vecy palace of the then still reigning
emperor.1\vo leftistcou,ps d'etat almost simultaneously. Two rival coups.
During the weeks tl1at had followed, the two groups of competitors
had vigorously slugged it out with each other. It would not be until the fol-
lowing year, in January of 1919, tl1at elections, with two montl1s delay,
would more or less ratify the two coups d'et,at of tl1e socialist left and the
Conunwli.st left.
"Vladinlir" Lenin, the patron saint of Communism, had seized power
in Petrograd in October of 1917, not by maldng an appeal to the voters,
but by hurling a few tens of tl1ousands of Red Guards in an onslaught
against the old Russia 'lb as.5ure tl1eir dictatorial power in a land where
their political adherents at that time represented only 2 or 3 percent of the
population, the Leninists had crushed the Ukrainian nationalists, the Cos-
sacks, the Tartars, the Crimeans----anyone who got in their way.
The Red Army had even come close to taldng Warsaw and planting
their bayonets in the hides of the Polish voters who naively believed-as
they would believe again in 1945---that Marxist democracy was estab-
lished by voting. That would be the permanent coup d'et,at in Russia for
threEH1Uarters of a century. For the benefit of the world boobs, there
would be a vote from time to time in the countries with proletarian dic-
tatorships for a single list of candidates (protesters beware!) with results
regularly around 99.9 percent.
The Communists of Germany did not have any say either. It was
Moscow that earlier gave the orders from its embassy in Berlin in 1918,
then from the secret hideouts of Radek and Tukhachevsky in 1923. If the
Communist leaders in Germany had not been incompetent windbags,
their coup d'etat could have succeeded both times.
Social Democrats and Commwli.st Spartacists alike, evecy one of them
had played at coup d'et,at, thereby flouting everything: the Constitution,
their oaths of office, and-at the least cost-their fine principles.
On the right, indisputably, they were no more scrupulous. The "Free
Co1ps," who saw action in the Baltic countlies, didn't give a tinker's damn
about democracy. Gen. von Luttwitz afterward and Dr. Wolfgang Kapp,
the high official [born in New York, 1868--Ed.], wanted to sweep away
the Weimar Regime with artillecy fire. The government had fled piteously
enough, thus avoiding casualties.
HITLER'S PUTSCH OF NOV. 91 1923 I 275
Its response had been as antidemocratic as the coup d'et,a,t. It had par-
alyzed the latter by ordering a general strike of the bakeries and transport
companies. It was thus only by famine that the ousted regime had been
reestablished. On Sept 26, 1923, Chancellor Ebert and Council President
Gustav Stresemann, entangled in their incessant ministerial crises, had
made use of Article 84 of the Weimar Constitution to entrust the power
which was slipping out of their hands-and teetering toward total disor-
der-to Gen. Hans von Seeckt and War Minister Otto Gessler.
These men, too, no more and no less than the others, had indulged in
a coup d'etat, discreetly but unequivocally. Their decisions had allowed
the army to subdue the Communist rioters. But the recourse to bayonets,
though it had been spectacular, had also unquestionably been illegal inas-
much as the law granting the army full powers had not yet been ratified
by the Gennan parliament.
Those were troubled times. The Weimar Assembly had been stillborn
and grew less effective year after year. In 1923 it no longer counted for
anytlling. Amid this anarchy and these dangers evecyone believed himself
charged with a redemptive mission. The virtually constant Communist
revolution, the foreign invasion of the Ruhr, the ruin and the famine were
all motives badgering one to seek and to improvise solutions. None of
them could get through the Reichstag. It was a parliament that had never
had either legs for marching or brains for thinking. It was the most useless
parliament in the democratic histocy of the centucy, accomplishing noth-
ing and passing into oblivion without leaving a trace. The coup d'et,a,t had
become an almost obligatocy recourse in Gennany. Evecyone had used
and abused it. The idea of a dictatorship had entered evecyone's mind. It
had become as natural as the notion of a dietetic cure. Even Stresemann,
a vecy fonnal minister who was frightened by the mere buzzing of a wasp,
accepted it with no other reservation than the choice of the dictator.
"It all depends," he declared at the Walhalla Theater in Halle, Gennany
on Nov. 11, 1923, "on the personality of the dictator, who, in any case is
subject to the economic necessities."
That was the universal watchword. The only concern was knowing
who would be the dictator, and how he would solve the economic
problem.
That same autumn of 1923, the Bavarian Gustav von Kahr-just like
the Ebert of 1918 or his rival, Liebknecht-had broken off with the Berlin
regime and with the legal government Studying tl1e matter, one sees that
things had been 1uuch 1nore illegal in BaV3.lia than anywhere else. As a
nmtter of fact tl,ere had been not just one coup d'etat at Munich in 1923,
but two contradictory coups d'etat conling one on top of tl1e otl1er, be-
conling entangled witl1 each other and then both coming to naught.
Hitler's rash ilupulse was not tl1e first Bavarian coup d'etat; it was on]y a
response to it. Hitler, to be sure, had dreamed, as so many others before
hi.In, of raising himself to power.
"For three years," he declared, "I have thought of nothing but a coup
d'et.a.t."
It ,vas more than an idea; it was an obsession. In that at least, he was
ahnost like everyone else. At Munich in November 1923, he was going to
be left little time by his competitors. These competitors were ex-Minister
von Kahr and his acolytes. They hadjust risen against Berlin, after Ebert
and Stresemann had dismissed them in a way on Sept. 26, 1923.
On that day, the government, at the end of its resources, had entrusted
the anny witll the saving of a undivided Germany, which von Kahr and his
associates did not want at any price, opposed as they were to all central-
ization. They had rebelled. This separatist coup d'etat, though still only in
the development stage, was precisely the opposite of what Hitler wished
to achieve. He was determmed to remake and enlarge a great and pow-
erful German empire, in which the diverse regions would be welded to-
gether indisputably and indestructibly.
In November 1923, Hitler undoubtedly had at his disposal the most
disciplined and best structured political movement in Germany. The other
parties marshaled 10 times as many members but had no backbone.
Hitler could count on a hundred thousand resolute, disciplined and fa-
natical partisans. Shock troops of an exceptional political worth, but still
small in numbers. And limited almost entirely to the region of Bavaria.
For Hitler, Bavaria was not really a goal. It was just a point of departure.
What Hitler meant to conquer and transform was the entire Reich. His
battle cry was"Aufnach Bertin" ("On to Berlin"), whereas the Bavarian
autonomists who hadjust risen against the capital and against the militaiy
dictatorship proclaimed on Sept. 26 wanted exactly the opposite: "Los
von Bertin" ("Free from Berlin"). The one meant to reconstitute and en-
large the Reich; the other proposed to dismember it.
That above all was what the Munich putsch was about. Would the
Bavarian separatists have the boldness to pull away from Berlin com-
pletely? Or would Hitler overtake them at the last tum. It would be a race
HITLER•s PUTSCH OF NOV. 9, 1923 I 277
between a suburbanized sexagenarian, von Kahr, the leader of the coali-

tion against Berlin-a man slow to make decisions, evasive, rather faint-
hearted-and the young long-distance runner, Hitler, bold, rough,
resolved to surmount all obstacles in order to beat von Kahr to the goal.
Von Kahr had been named state collUlUS.5ioner general of Bavaria on
Sept. 26, 1923 by the president of the Bavarian government, Eugen von
Knilling, who was already in semi-rebellion against the Berlin govern-
ment. The latter had learned of von Kahr's nomination only through a
dispatch of the Wolf agency. But by virtue of Article 48 of the Constitu-
tion, it was Gen. von Seeckt and, under his orders, Gen. Gessler, who
had the nominating power. Before 48 hours were up, a second conflict
was going to arise between the military authorities of the Reich and the
man in charge of the army in Bavaria, Gen. Otto von Lossow, the com-
mander of defense District VII. Added to the civil rebellion of von Kahr
was a military rebellion characterized by this general as still more cata-
strophic for the unity of the Reich. The motive?
Rather insignificant all told. Gen. Gessler had ordered Lossow by wire
to seize Hitler's newspaper, the Vollcischer Beobachter, "by force if nec-
essary." The Volkischer Beobachter, which had committed the crime of
Iese mqiesM the day before by having given Gen. von Seeckt a going-over
and having made less than amiable allusions-another crime of l,ese ma-
jesM-to von Seeckt's dragon-lady spouse, the most eminent DorotheaJa-
cobson. In response to this order of the minister of the anny; another
telegram, short and scathing, had been sent immediately by von ~ w
to his chief in Berlin: ''Befehl, unaus.fiih,rbar' ("the order cannot be carried
- out"). Bluntly put, it was a flat refusal on the general~ part to obey his
Minister. That signified a split The government's Reichswehr would no
longer be obeyed in Munich. Its delegate in Bavaria was in revolt against
it. Von Lossow was uniting with von Kahr. The coup d'etat, civil and mil-
itaIY, was thus complete.
In truth, Gen. von Lossow's convictions did not date just from that
autumn of 1923. He had previously made a very revealing remark. His
solution aimed at liquidating the nation's unity: "If everything collapses,
let each land shift for itself." Some months beforehand, since the Ruhr,
this prospect of separatism had not alanned him. He just hadn't both-
ered to put it into words. The immediate response: President Ebert fired
Gen. Lossow.
Von Lossow was thus just a cashiered mutineer in his Munich post.
278 I HITI.EH DEMOCHAT
Von Kahr nruned hin1 Landeskonnna:ndant of a purely Bavarian anny. On

every barracks ground in Munich, officers and soldiers were called upon
to take a11 oatl1 to the rebel general. All co1uplied with the exception of
t\\'O generals who declared it unconstitutional. But 24 superior officers
becrune acco1nplices of tl1e rebel at tl1e seat of the nillit.ary district where
Lossow had been installed as tl1e big boss. The general in breach of dis-
cipline fonnally refused to obey President Ebe1t and his own military
chiefs. One 1uore putsch. Although it did not go beyond the stage of
words, fron1 tl1at day on tl1ere were two "e1nergency states" in opposition
to each otl1er: tl1at of the central Reich, which decreed von Kalrr and von
Lossow illegal; a11d that of von Kahr alld von Lossow, who thumbed their
noses at Ebert and sent the Berlin government packing.
The quarrel was going to becon1e 1nore alld more irre1nediable.
• SepL 28, 19'23: On his own autl1ority, von Kalrr abrogated, for the
whole territory of Bavaria, the "law on tl1e defense of the republic" de-
creed by the Berlh1 govenunent by virtue of article 48 of the Constitution.
In otl1er words, tl1e central government from that day no longer had ally
power in Bavaria.
• OcL 1: The order was given by Berlin to Gen. von Lossow to proceed
to arrest an officer accused of "felony treason." Lossow immediately re-
sponded with a categorical refusal.
• Oct 18: tl1e minister of tl1e Reichswelrr fired Gen. von Lossow alld
named Gen. Kress von Kressenstein to take his place.
Response: The Bavarian government publicly broke off all relations
with official Germany. It confirlned Gen. von Lossow in his new post as
military corruuandant of tl1e army of Bavaria. It released the officers and
soldiers of tl1e Seventh Division from their oath of loyalty to the national
Reichswehr and took the Seventh Division W1der its own authority.
• Oct 27: Final action by President Ebett He called upon von Kahr to
respect the Constitution. Total refusal. Von Kahr went further and concen-
trated troops on tlle northern border of Bavaria.
• Nov. 4, 1923: Gen. von Lossow prepared the creation of a BavariaI1
directorate consisting of himself, of course, former state commissioner
von Kahr, and former chief of police Col. Hans von Seisser. An essential
detail: this directorate would be established "pending tlle probable return
of the Wittelsbachs."
This was not just rupture with Berlin: they would sho1tly proceed to
the separatist restoration of tlle fallen monarchy.
HITLER'S PUTSCH OF NOV. 9, 1923 I 279
The plan was clear: separation from Berlin and reinstatement (without
consulting the citizeruy) of a puppet dynasty which had not been capable
of anytlung but taking to its heels when a madman, the Jewish Kurt Eis-
ner, had seized the royal palace on Nov. 9, 1918. The heir, Rupprecht of
Bavaria, had dreamed of reappearing at Berlin, in the event of rest.oration,
as the successor t.o the fallen emperor. For the moment he was falling
back on the crown of Bavaria that had been thrown away by the family
a few years earlier. Even that crown, scoured clean by von Kahr and von
Lossow, might look well on his noggin once again. The Kahr-wssow con-
spiracy was thus a double one: against Berlin and at tl1e same time for tlle
rest.oration of a regional dynasty separating Bavaria from tlle Reich. Ray-
mond Poincare couldn't have dreamed up anything better.
But it was precisely what Hitler found execrable. That kind of sep-
aratism would mark the collapse of his plans for a greater Germany.
Once Bavaria had separated, it would then be the tun1 of the Palatinate,
of the Ruhr, of the Rhineland (Hugo Stinnes's famous "duchy"). And
perhaps even the tum of East Prussia, which was also being worked on
by the separatists. Separatism was as formidable an enemy of the Reich
as Comrnunis1n. Both would be swept away, or they would see the
Reich go down. Hitler, however, was not able to do what he wanted at
Munich. A heavily armed division (the Seventh Division of the ex-Reich-
swehr, now passed int.o the hands of Lossow) was a very difficult obsta-
cle t.o remove, in spite of the fact, as everyone knew, that the obligatory
swearing of allegiance to Lossow by the young officers and soldiers had
been neither voluntary nor sincere.
A great asset for Hitler, however, was the pusillanimity of Gen. von
Lossow. He was weak-willed. He was hesitant about committing himself
t.oo definitely. The notion that he could lose his gilded epaulets bothered
him. He didn't want t.o take a chance unless the definite success of the
coup d'etat could be assured. He would undertake it., he said, "only when
he was certain of a 51 percent chance of carrying it off." When is one ever
sure ahead of time that a coup d'etat has 51 chances out of a hundred of
being successful?
It is character that assures the odds. A weak man will fail with an 80
percent chance; a strong man will win with one of 20 percent. Gen. von
Lossow would mi$ the boat because he didn't have the guts for it. He
would let himself be overtaken by Hitler at the start., even tllough he had
a lead of a hundred meters on him at the outset. Even though he had a
troop of 12,000 rifles and considerable heavy annament, he would cave

in on the night of Nov. 8, 1923, the moment he saw Hitler's revolver under
his nose.
To neutralize tl1e pan-Gemtan Hitler, von Kahr, the separatist and re-
gionalist, had taken pains from the very first day to prohibit any National
Socialist meeting. 1l1e Volkischer Beobachter had been suspended~ven
tl1ough it had not been when the order for it had come from Berlin a
montl1 earlier. Hitler's situation at the beginning of November 1923 was
as con1plicated as could be. On the one hand, he did not wish at any cost
to oppose the soldiers of the Reichswehr, even if they were temporarily
under the thumb of von Lossow and von Kahr; on the other hand, much
infonnation was being kept from him.
But his private infonnation was explicit: the definite move by von
Kahr's and von Lossow's people, passing from threats and rebellion to
action, was imminent. Besides, why should they constrain themselves
when they had a considerable milit.ary force and could see the Berlin gov-
ernment, undennined from all sides, on the point of resigning for the nth
time? Hitler meant to nullify this anti-national coup before it occurred.
He would have to act quickly and stronglY, however feeble the means at
his disposal. He decided that he would forestall von Kahr. He set the day:
the 11th of November, a significant day since it recalled the 11th of No-
vember 1918 and the collapse of the Gennany he intended to reest.ablish
in all her power.
The plan was prepared immediately: on Nov. 10, 1923, the military
commander of his Kampfbund and the head of the SA would assemble
their men (several thousands) under the pretext of night maneuvers to
the north of the city of Munich. In the morning, he knew, the most impor-
tant contingents of the army would be detained by the commemoration
of the annistice. As if they, too, were coming to take part in the day of re-
membrance, Hitler's men would move in columns into the heart of Mu-
nich. In a brief surprise attack and without casualties-since the troops
would be on official service-they would seize all the centers of power
of the town, which was more or less demilitarized. Hitler was not un-
aware either that the guards that day would be reduced almost to zero at
the post offices, on the bridges, in the newspaper printing plants, and
above all at the army district command post. Lossow would be away, at-
tending the parade from the top of the official platfonn. Once everytlling
was in place, Gen. Erich Ludendorff and Hitler would announce that they
were assuming power. Von Kahr and von Los&>w had almost no popular
support. The people would rally to Hitler, backed up by Ludendorff, a na-
tional legend. Under tl1ose conditions it was probable that von Kahr and
von Lossow would bow before thefait accompli.
Why call in Gen. Ludendorff? Hitler did not like hiin especially. He was
authoritarian, standoffish, peremptory with his subordinates. Moreover,
he was obsessed by strange whiins. His wife, Marguerite, was eccentric;
she wanted to found a new religion based on mysterious precepts of a
vague antiquity. Ludendorff had fallen into step with his prophetess like
a recruit. That was his negative side and was little known.
The positive side was Ludendorffs prestige. He had been one of the
two great military leaders of the Reich. One further success in mid~uly
of 1918 close by Reiins, and he would have entered Paris. The Germans
were proud of his past and his grand bearing. Whenever he appeared,
stern-visaged, his uniform covered with decorations, his pointed helmet
gleaming in tl1e sun, the public cheered. Patriotically speaking, he was
precisely the right person to serve as front man. Hitler had therefore flat-
tered him and heaped praise upon him. If he triumphed, Ludendorff
would beco1ne one of the great stars of the Reich. That prospect pleased
his pride, which was considerable. So there he was in November 1923 in-
volved in the planning of Hitler's coup d'etat. His greatsaber awaited him
on the game table of his residence.
Surely von Kahr had gotten wind of this imminent counter-putsch? Or
had he been warned by one or another of Lossow's spies? One thing is cer-
tain: that with each of them seeking to gain a step on the other, von Kahr
announced a big meeting for the 8th of November, two days before the
night when Hitler's troops were to march on Munich. If von Kahr an-
nounced decisively on that 8th of November that he was reestablishing a
kingdom of Bavaria under the authority of Prince Rupprecht and at the
same time told Berlin to go to the devil, Hitler's plan would be annihilated.
His plan for a united Gennany would be finished and his movement
banned Hitler had to act swiftly. It was also no longer possible to main-
tain the anticipated date of Nov. 10 for the putsch. It had to be set imme-
diately for the 8th of November, the day of von Kahr's meeting. It was
already the 7tl1 of November. Hitler had only 24 hours in which to effect
a total change strategically and tactically in his planned maneuver. The
arrangements decided on for the 11th of November no longer made any
sense. He had to come up with a parade iinmediately.
282 I HTI'LEH DEMOCRAT
\Vhat parade'? Hitler was a 1nan of hnagination and quick t.o make a de-
cision. He inunediately decided tl1at tl1e battle would be conducted at the
very place ,vhere von Kahr intended t.o be first to act. His big meeting of
Nov. 8 at the B1'i:rgerbra1ureller was inevitably going to bring together all
of tbe civil and nillitary autl1orities of Munich, as well as several thousand
of tl1e to,vn's notables: all of Bavaria's elite. And if Hitler netted all of them
in one haul?
And if, at tl1e very place where von Kahr was preparing to set forth his
plans, he, Hitler, set forth and imposed his own? Crowds were cowardly
and fickle. Lossow, though a general, bore little resemblance to the god
~fars. And von Kahr was just a high-ranking civil servant: was he going t.o
stand fast ooder the booming cannon of Hitler's voice? On this occasion,
Hitler doubtless had no other choice. A 51 percent chance of success was
required by the learned calculations of a von Lossow. Hitler had only a
slight chance.
The bourgeois audience might shout him down and eject him. He even
risked getting arrested before having said a word. For once von Kahr and
von Lossow could act-who knows-like Bayard on the bridge of
Garigliano or Bonaparte on the bridge of Arcole.
But for Hitler there was no hesitating. A slim chance? In any case it
was the only chance left. Otherwise, in the dawn of Nov. 9, evecything
would be definitely lost for him, for his party and for the unity of Ger-
many.
The affair would be carried out boldly. Hitler had not told anyone of
the change in plans, not even Ludendorff. He took care to disguise his
intentions to the point of chatting for a long time that afternoon at the
Cafe Heck, the most public place in Munich, in the company of his
friend Hoffmann, the photographer, who was a notorious gossip. Hitler
left him after two hours of trifling conversation, explaining that he had
a fierce headache. Hoffmann, with no longer any thought that there
might be a coup in the offing, soon went to bed. It was von Lossow's
police that Hitler had wished to deceive. While Munich was seething
with excitement before von Kahr's meeting, he had passed several hours
in an extremely well-known establishment sipping coffee. What police
infonner would ever believe that this tranquil customer would be a
"putschist" just two hours later?
Hitler had only just chosen a few bodyguards, who were unaware of
their mission. He had them get into his big red Mercedes-Benz. Goering,
beside him, was carrying his steel helmet in a parcel. Hitler him.self was
wearing a morning coat concealed under his trench coat (this was at a
time when persons of distinction still wore funereal clothes). He had
pinned on his Iron Cross. The police had not in the least anticipated any-
thing. The secrecy of Hitlerts plot had been absolute. Meanwhile, 600
stonn troopers had been rounded up by Goering in the Burgerbrliukeller,
a big beer garden, supposedly just to toss off a few beers.
They soon slipped into the darkness around the Burgerbraukeller.
The great hall there was filled to capacity by 3,000 people, especially
rich people. His Excellency, von Kahr, was on the platform, solemnly
attired in a frock coat, as was to be expected. In a monotone, he began
to reel off a ponderous speech. His monarchy the next day would cer-
tainly be no joke.
It was 8:45 in the evening. Hitler and two of his faithful supporters,
Alfred Rosenberg and Max Erwin von Scheubner-Richter (who would be
slain the next day) were watching, out of sight behind a pillar at the end
of the hall. Suddenly there was tumult Von Kahr, tenified, yelled: "Itts the
Communists!"
It was Hitler. 'I\venty-two stonn troopers-not one more-had just
burst open the door at the end of the hall and were training a machine
gun at the audience. Hitler leaped onto a chair and fired a shot into the
ceiling from his revolver. General panic ensued. Chairs were over-
turned every which way. A Cabinet minister took cover under a table.
On the platfonn, von Kahr, scared stiff, was white as the sheets of his
marital bed. Without saying a word, he looked at Hitler, who was climb-
ing up beside him on the platfonn.
"The national revolution has begun," Hitler shouted. "Six hundred men
a.nned to the teeth have surrounded this hall. We are in control every-
where in Munich. The army has come over to our side. In a few minutes
they will be here with our storm troopers." The audience was on edge, be-
wildered and annoyed. Goering got on the platfonn and jeeringly aroused
them into the beginnings of good humor while Hitler led away von Kahr,
von Los.sow and von Seisser into an aqjoining room. Hitler put it to them
squarely: "You're nothing now. Would you like t.o become something again
in a joint government?"
Rather than violence, Hitler preferred t.o solve things without a brawl.
These three men were the extreme opposite of everything he wanted and
of everything that he was personally. But to this large, well-to-do audi-
28,1. I HITLER DEMOCHAT
ence, they represented confonnity and tranquillity. If they were prepared

to reappear as stopgaps in his revolutiomuy govem1nent, he was disposed
to save for the 1noment their 1uontlng coats and gold braid.
"Your Excellency von Kahr, you will be regent of Bavaiia"
That didn't conunit Hitler to 1nuch, because he reserved for hiinself
"tl1e political direction of the new national govem1nent" If he directed
everything, what else was tl1ere left to direct? In his plan, Regent von
Kahr would very soon at 1nost be filing dossiers and dusting his medals.
Acting as if he had reached an agree1nent with tl1e tl1ree men, who were
still staggered by tl1e events, Hitler returned to the platfonn. In just a few
nlinutes he brought about "a total reversal of tile situation." He hanunered
hon1e each point of his speech: "I am now going to carry out tl1e vow I
made to n1yself five years ago when I was lying blind and disabled in a mil-
itary hospital bed: to know neitller rest nor respite until a new, powerful
and free Gennany shall have arisen from tl1e wretched Gern1any of
today." The three thousand people had booed hiin at his anival. At the end
of a quarter of an hour, they were on tl1eir feet in a tunutlt of emotion,
the n1en wildly excited, the women in tears.
"In a masterful speech," Karl Alexander von Mueller, a professor of
the University of Munich, has related, "he turned the mood of the audi-
ence inside out like a glove. I have rarely attended such a spectacle."
"Kallr, Lossow, Seisser," Hitler exclaimed, "support our national gov-
emn1ent Are you in agreement with this solution for the German na-
tion?" He left the platfonn, entrusted by the assembly with the mission
of informing von Kallr that "the entire audience would follow him if he
joined the revolt." Kallr, Lossow and Seisser were still vaguely hesitant.
But they had heard the clamor proving to them that Hitler had turned
their own audience right around. Suddenly present in the hall was the
big gun: Gen. Ludendorff.
Ludendorff, if he had known, would doubtless not have approved Hit-
ler's plan, which he would have thought too risky. But as he had acted,
and as he would always act, Hitler had infonned, at the very last minute,
only the men indispensable to him for the moment. The others would be
infonned in keeping with the flow of events. As soon as the hall had been
taken by assault, Scheubner-Richter had run out to fetch Ludendorff, who
was in a bad humor and grumbling at not having been called until it was
all over. He was hastily loaded into a car before he even had time to
change his coat. His sudden entrance further increased the emotions stir-
ring the audience. "What? Ludendorff is joining up, too? He's going up to
Hitler?" That sort of legalizes the revolution. To Hitler's three semi-pris-
oners, Ludendorff said brusquely: "I am just as surprised as you are. But
tl1e step has been taken, and it concerns the Gennan fatherland. I can say
but one thing to you: be with us."
Witl1 us. He was joining Hitler as if the two of them together had ef-
fected the coup. Von Kahr gave his agreement "as the lieutenant of the
monarchy," even though said Bavarian monarchy had sunk to the bottom
of the lake of history and would never rise again. Hitler had not the slight-
est objection to Kahrs pompously awarding himself this sonorous title.
Gen. von Lossow's adherence was still more concise: "Your Excellency's
words are my command," he said to Ludendorff, quite happy to take shel-
ter under his umbrella
As for von Seisser, he glided like King Kaspar after ldngs Melchior and
Balthazar, witJ1out even offering an hisooric word. The audience cheered
at the reappearance of Hitler without his gun, of Ludendorff, dignified as
a chamberlain of the Kaiser, and of the three survivors: Von Kahr, the sup-
posed savior of the monarchy; Von Lossow, clicking his heels; and police
Lieutenant Colonel Seisser, who would have jailed Hitler half an hour ear-
lier if he had been able to, and who was now quite happy oo cling to the
victor's coattails. As historian Fest recounts, "The group returned oo the
hall together and put on a show of fraternization. This demonstration of
apparent unity was enough to get the audience climbing onto their chairs,
and the actors shook hands to the cheers of the public." Ludendorff raised
the general level of enthusiasm with these words: "Seized by the great-
ness of the mo1nent and by surprise," he said, "I place myself at the dis-
posal of the national government of the Reich."
The crowd went out cheering the first National Socialist companies
marching by in the streets. The coup d'etat had been a master stroke. Act-
ing boldly, Hitler had succeeded fantastically.
Thirteen hours later, however, all would be lost. Hitler would be
wounded; 14 of his comrades would be slain; and the revolution would
come to a bloody end.
Gen. Erich von Ludendorff was the architect of the German war effort during World
War I and its victory over Russia. He was forced out of power by the newly formed Bol-
shevik government in 1918, and dedicated the remainder of his career to fighting com-
munism in Germany. An early patron of Adolf Hitler, with whom he is pictured here,
Ludendorff developed the doctrine of Total War-of the total mobilization of the people
to resist the oppressive nature of Soviet Russia.
CHAPTER
THE END OF HITlER'S

WOUlD-BE REVOlUTION
est, the historian, has admitted straight out that Hitler could
perfectly well have succeeded in his coup d'et,at, as he had
anticipated, without resorting to violence: The fact that
[Hitler] did not give the order to occupy the central telegraph
offices and the ministries and did not make certain he had
control of the railroad stations and barracks was in the logic of things. He
did not seek in any way to seize power in Munich by revolution, but rely-
ing on the solid foundation given him by the power of the Bavarian cap-
ital, he proposed to march on Berlin.
Was Hitler naive, like Ludendorff, who had let Kahr and his 3.$0Ciates
get away, the very men who would ensure his defeat a few hours later?
In the first place, he ought to have put his doubtful partners under lock
and key until the out.come was~- In the second place, when you are
making a revolution, you cannot worry about casualties among the oppo-
sition. Once you decide to go ahead with it, you must immediately, at
whatever cost, seize the means to control and command everything. If
resistance should happen to arise in a sector as important as communi-
cations, it must be crushed relentlessly.
Nothing great in this life is accomplished by halves. Ideals are not
enough; the opponent may scoff at them. Too great a concern for exerc.i&
ing restraint is utter sentimentalism in politics. And sentimentalism is not
appropriate at a mo1nent when everything is at stake in a revolution.

Lenin taught tl1at to tl1e world in October of 1917. He didn't leave the
Russian telephone and telegraph syste1ns in tl1e hands of his opponents.
These n1edia of rapid conm1unication comprised the first objective Lenin
pounced on. Hitler ought to have reread the history of the Bolshevik rev-
olution before rushing into an undertaking with such obvious risks.
But Hitler, in tnlth, did not intend to inlitate Lenin at all. He wished at
all costs to avoid creating a breach between tl1e anny and himself, be-
cause it was with the anny that he meant to create his new Germany.
A great blunder had been made in not taking over the anny commu-
nications center. When Hitler learned of it-it was barely 11:00 in the
evening-he could still easily have deprived Lossow of the use of the
equipment It would have been a matter of an armed attack of no more
than a few nlinutes. Stubborn and true to his plan of conquest without fir-
ing a shot, he wished to avoid a military conflict
Because Hitler was unwilling to act, the putsch, wllich was succeeding
handsomely that night, would fail the following morning. The Bavarian
regime, on its deathbed a few hours earlier, had been able to find new life
thanks to a few telegraph keys and wires.
In the meantime another prominent figure had intervened: Prince Rup-
precht What was he drinking that night? He was a simple citizen, and far
from an illustrious one, since all his family had yielded to the Marxist rab-
ble on Nov. 9, 1918, exactly five years previously, abat,doning Bavaria to
a dreadful dictatoxship of the riffraff that was rapidly transformed into a
soviet republic of Bavaria.
The prince in question, roused in his castle, sent an emissary to Kahr
and Lossow at half past one in the morning.
Was it to give them advice? No, to give them orders. In whose name,
and in the name of what? Who had conferred any ldnd of a mandate on
him? But Kahr wished to please him in all things, dreaming only of taking
his place as soon as pc>s.5ible at the head ofthe Crown Council. Rupprecht
had a particular hatred for Gen. Ludendorff: "Ludendorff is nothing but
an intruder; he's a Prussian." That kind of Gennan didn't interest him. It
was only at Munich that he might get back the crown that his family had
let fall at the feet of the rabble.
The solution recommended by this ex-heir to the crown vis-a-vis the
putschists was that of extreme brutality: "Use the troops if necessary."
But at that point, the town of Munich was for the putschists, with all
THE END OF HITLER'S WOULD-BE REVOLUTION I 289
its heart. The National Socialist Party had enrolled 287 new members that
very evening. Open recruitment offices in various parts of the town were
doing a land-office business. In the military barracks, the men and the of-
ficers of junior grade sympathized joyfully with Hitler's actions and his
marching plans.
Contrary to the desires of the Bavarian people, Prince Rupprecht was
thus prepared to fire on his compatriots in order to get back his palace
and his throne. He would be obeyed. A few hours later the center of Mu-
nich would be strewn with dead bodies. The night of Nov. 9, 1923 ended
in confusion.
The rooftops would soon know the light of dawn. Everything grew
worse. Was there anything Hitler could still do?
Upon receiving the bad news, Hitler was stunned. Ludendorff, dead
tired, had tiptoed offro bed. Hitler would thus have to make the decisions
alone.
Seizing the communications cent.er of the 19th Infantry Regiment bar-
racks by force and recapturing the lying von Kahr and von Lossow, occu-
pying the railroad station and the bridges-that was not impossible. Hitler
had several thousand sure men available for that. But having them attack
the barracks was not at all to his liking. He wanted his coup d'et,at to suc-
ceed because the people had supported and followed him, not because a
faithless general and a hopelessly bourgeois official had first supported
and then betrayed him. So he took no steps to conquer the last military
stronghold of the regime. True to himself, he put his whole being that
night into the task of rallying public opinion behind him. He meant to
carry the day on the strength of public opinion, despite all his gold-
braided and pencil-pushing opponents. They would have to yield when
the people, solidly behind him, imposed their decision. "Propaganda,
propaganda," Hitler told his night crew.
Propaganda had always been his decisive weapon, his artillery taking
dead aim at whatever was in the way. He decided that 14 big "mass gath-
erings" would be organized immediately. Starting at dawn the entire town
would be mobilized. Thousands of Munich residents would be rallied in
every district, and Hitler would address them all. Patrols would take to
the streets in every direction spreading the watchword: "All flags flying."
"Now we'll see," said Hitler, "if we can't create some enthusiasm."
Create it they did. The forenoon passed most favorably. The town was
everywhere bedecked with flags. The town's most important civic cent.er,
290 I HlTI.EH UEMOCHAT
the town hall, had flown the swastika fron1 the st.rut. Across fro111 it, Julius
Streicher, 1nounted on a platfonn, was eloquently addressing a 1ueeting.
The crowd was at high pitch. Not one opponent, not a single Marxist or
separatist could be heard. Not wanting to be left out of the revolution,
Streicher is said to have cut short his speech and joined the rebels, falling
into step inunediately behind Hitler.
But in the face of tllis real Bavaria, official Bavaiia since the night be-
fore had been setting its traps and its mines. Hitler decided, before hold-
ing his 14 111ass n1eetings, to put on a great public propaganda
den1onstration that would proceed through tl1e town from one end to the
otl1er, so tl1at tl1e people would have an opportunity to express an opinion
tl1at very morning. It was Ludendorff, 1nore than Hitler, who had wanted
tllis irrunediate parade. Hitler knew only too well that despite any amount
of public cheering, a single volley of shots would suffice to put an end to
llis co11,p d'etat.
"That was the 1nost desperately daring decision of my life," he would
later say.
The parade was rapidly formed. It was snowing. In the vanguard, men
waved swastika banners and the old tricolor flags. Hitler, very pale and
wrapped in his everlasting trench coat, followed. Goering had put on his
steel helmet 1narked with the swastika. He was wearing a black leather
coat against which could be seen his Order of Merit insignia. Two thou-
sand loyal supporters followed in orderly colwnns. At the end of the pa-
rade marched a numerous and somewhat irregular throng of former
soldiers, cadets in uniform, young men, employees and tradesmen. One
n1ark only identified them as a group: tile swastika armband. Most re-
markable of the leaders was Gen. Ludendorff, who wore a hunting jacket,
as if he were going after an Alpine chamois.
"We set out," Hitler has related, "with the conviction that in one way
or another this would be the end. We set out singing." Hitler, the history
buff, was the only one to remember that Nov. 9, 1923 was the anniversary
of Napoleon Bonaparte's 18 Brumaire. The "little corporal" succeeded
that day, just barely. That evening he was the master of France.
What would he, the other corporal, be this evening?
The demonstration reached the Ludwig Bridge, and the affair very
nearly came to a bloody halt right then. The police commander had just
ordered his guard detail to load their rifles. Goering 1nade a rush at him.
A hundred other demonstrators seized policemen, and the bridge was
free. The street on the other side, the Zweibrueckenstrasse, started to

seetl1e with excitement. "The Zweibrueckenstrasse," American historian
Jolu1 Toland writes, "was lined with people, many cheering enthusiasti-
cally and waving swastika flags. Bystanders began joining the parade.
Tilis enthusias1n inspired tl1e marchers to sing their favorite Stnrm &mg."
Toland continues: "In 16 minutes the men arrived at the Marienplatz,
still festooned with swastika banners from the rallies. The Nazi flag still
waved atop the City Hall, and a large crowd was singing patriotic songs."
Hitler was "received by the masses as a savior," even Fest notes.
"We will go to the city and win the people to our side," Hitler had an-
nounced. Plainly it had been done. It will never be sufficiently pointed
out, if one wishes to be objective, that from the evening before, not a sin-
gle Marxist nose had put in an appearance. Patriots and only patriots
were everywhere. And German patriots. Not one separatist had appeared
either, or uttered a cry, or made a wry face. Leaning on her elbows at her
hotel window, Winifred Wagner waved at Hitler, who, for her, was the
reincarnation of Parsifal or Lohengrin. Her eyes shining, she had once
asked, "Do you not think he is destined to be the savior of Gennany?"
It was under this feminine eye that tragedy, in a few moments, was
going to sweep everything away.
The energetic demonstrators, singing O Deut,schl.and hock in Ehren
("Oh Germany, High in Honor"), had resumed their march amid the
crowds cheering them more and more. The procession moved toward
the Feldherrnhalle, the Hall of the Marshals, a monument built in a
strange Florentine style (a copy of the Loggia dei Lanci) and intended to
recall the great glories of tl1e Reich. It was there-by chance or incredible
bad luck-tl1at Ludendorff, who was in the lead, instead of taking a wide
avenue, led the procession into the Residel\7.Strasse, a small and rather
narrow street. Anywhere else, and the police would not have been able
to set up a barrier. In numbers they were not a 50th of the demonstrators.
It was only in such a death trap that they could bar the way. And Luden-
dorff had just led the 1narchers into this trap.
It was just a matter of seconds. For a long time, it was not known who
had fired the first shot. A lieutenant of the state police, named Godin,
stated in his report that it was one of Hitler's men who had fired first
Godin later retracted and established, by drawing a sketch that clinched
the matter, tl1at it was tl1e police who had opened fire. In the flash of an
eye tllere were 14 dead men strewn on the ground.
Bauriedl, tlle standard-bearer, soaked tlle flag with his blood as he

died, a flag that would ever after be known in the histocy of Nazism as the
Bl.u.lfahne, tlle Blood Flag. Goering had received a bullet in the groin. He
was canied on nlen's backs, in an ahnost desperate st.ate, across the 'lyrol
n\ountains to Italy. He would put in more tl1an a year before he recovered,
and then only iinperfectly, witll residual pains that could be relieved only
by drugs. The unjust reputation he was given of being a drug addict had
no other basis tl1an that.
And Hitler? At the moment of the volley he gave his arm to an officer,
his true friend Max Erwin von Scheubner-Richter. The latter, hit by a bul-
let right in the lung, fell down dead, dragging Hitler with him in his fall.
The man next to him, Ulrich Graf, instantly threw himself onto the body
of the Fuehrer and was hit by six bullets meant for Hitler. Ludendorff,
stiffly erect, had continued to advance toward the men firing. They put
down their rifles then and let the general pass, immutable, one hand in a
pocket of his cape.
Hitler painfully struggled free of the bodies of his dead comrades
about him. He had suffered a fractured humerus when he hit the
ground. Around him all was blood and moaning. A physician, Dr.
Walther Schultz, helped him into a medical vehicle and drove him to
the entrance of the old cemetecy, a sinister relay station, while waiting
for him to be evacuated.
In the city, the anger of the crowd was intense. The police were spat
upon from all sides. "The indignant citizens," John Toland, the historian,
writes, "cried: 'Get the hell out of here, Jew defenders, betrayers of the Fa-
therland, dirty dogs. Heil Hitler. Down with Kahr.' "
The National Socialists were still in possession of the streets. In closed
ranks the Land.shut unit paraded defiantly to the station, singing, and
bearing the swastika and the steel hehnet.
Roehm and his stonn troopers were holding the milit.acy headquarteIS
of Wehrkreis VII, the center of Gen. von Lossow's power. Von Lossow
himself was still in the barracks of the Second Artillecy Regiment, where
he had taken refuge. But what point was there in continuing an operation
that no longer made any sense? Roehm had just learned that all the lead-
ers of the movement were dead or wounded. Everywhere it was affirmed
that Hitler had succwnbed. Gen. von Epp, who was rather disposed to
favor Nazism and had no ties with Lossow, endeavored to act as inter-
mediary and was successful in arranging it so that Roehm and his loyal
troops could evacuate tl1e official building witl1out anyone being arrested.
Roehm carried out a final, and particularly spectacular, parade
tJtrough tlle streets of Munich. Carrying their dead upon their backs, the
members of tl1e procession walked through the city, unarmed, in a silent
farewell march. Again this time there was not a hostile ccy. The man who
marched in the lead and carried the flag was a young CatJ1olic. He would
be spoken of one day: His name was Heinrich Hiinmler.
Frau von Scheubner-Richter, hastening to her husband's dead body,
spoke these words wortlly of the ancients: "This is tenible, but that is is
the fate of an officer's wife."
Hitler, during this time, despite the tenible suffering caused by his
arm, had started out on foot to seek refuge. He recalled the villa of his
friend Ernst "Putzi" Hanfsta.engl, whose wife, Helene, was a young and
vecy beautiful American woman. It may seem astonishing, but it was thus
an American woman who was going to take Hitler in and hide him that
evening after the putsch had failed.
Hitler had arrived at the little countcy home, near the church of the vil-
lage of Uffing on Lake Staffel, around 4:00 in the afternoon. Helene, seeing
Hitler at the end of his strength and in agony from his iitjury, at first
wanted him to lie down and rest. But the pain kept getting worse. His
arm was swollen enormously. Hitler even believed that he had been hit by
a bullet. It was only after long effort that Dr. Schultz and an aid man who
had accompanied him succeeded in setting tlle fracture, without any
anesthesia, of course. The young American woman heard his groans of
pain tlrrough the door.
A long time afterward, in tl1e United States, she wrote down some fas-
cinating memories of the life of the wounded Hitler given shelter beneath
her roof. She put her English traveling coat over his iitjured shoulder.
Hitler did not close his eyes all nigl1t. He appeared at lunch draped in a
huge bathrobe belonging to his friend, Helene's husband, who had disap-
peared at the end of the fusillade. "I feel like a pseudo-Roman senator,"
Hitler said, a wan s1nile playing on his gaunt face. At night he asked that
the shutters be closed. They would be looking for him evecywhere by this
time. He sensed the predators on the prowl.
The telephone rang. The police were engaged in searching the house
of Helene's mother, also an American. Relentless as Cerberus, they were
surely going to visit the other house at any moment Hitler drew his re-
volver.
294 I HlTLEH DEMOCHAT
..What are you doh,g?" his hostess cried. She seized his hand and
wrested fro1u him the revolver he had ready to fire. "Think of all your
loyal followers who believe in you. How can you forsake all those good
people who share your ideal of saving your country, while you take your
own life?"
Hitler covered his face with his hands. The young American ran imme-
diately into anotl,er room and hid the revolver in a barrel of flour. Mean-
while Hitler had gotten hold of himself. Helene brought him some blank
sheets of paper. He calmly dictated his instructions: Max Amann, his fi-
nancial 1uanager, would have to take care of all business matters; Alfred
Rosenberg was to be responsible for the party newspaper and to direct
tl,e party in his absence; Ernst Hanfstaengl, Helene's husband, was to
keep up his foreign connections and look after foreign relations.
To each of his other colleagues, he assigned a specific mission. He had
scarcely signed the last paper when they heard cars stopping outside and
police dogs howling. The young American ran to the flour barrel a second
time and buried right at the bottom the documents which would allow
National Socialism to continue on its course no matter what happened.
Then, quite naturally, she went and opened the door.
Hitler had made no effort to get away. He stood waiting, quite impas-
sive. The policemen halted. "Don't waste your time," Hitler said to the of-
ficer of the state police. "I am ready." Despite the bitter cold awaiting him
outside, he refused a warm coat. He threw his trench coat over his shoul-
ders as best he could, taking care only to take along his Iron Cross. His
face was deathly pale when he went out into the torrential rain and gust-
ing wind. At 10:00 at night, 65 kilometers away at Landsberg on the Lech,
the heavy door of Cell No. Seven was closed after him.
Everything appeared, finally, to be lost.
All hope, however, was not dead.
The city of Munich had been stirred to intense feelings for Hitler
after the failure of the putsch. There had been not the least sign of sol-
idarity with Kahr and Lossow and their people. In powerless rage, they
had pounced on the movement that had made them tremble. Its offices
had been closed, the Volkischer Beobachter banned and all its assets
seized. But the harder they hit, the more indignation they aroused. "For
some days," writes Benoist-Mechin, "the people, prey to a strange agi-
tation, have been roaming the streets singing patriotic songs and booing
von Kahr."
THE END OF HITLER'S \VOULD-BE REVOLUTION I 295
"The streets of the city," adds historian Pierre Soisson, "resounded

with enthusiastic cries of Deutschland Erwache ['Gennany Awake'] and
'Heil Hitler."
A third French historian, Raymond Cartier, concludes: "Kahr, in 24
hours, has become the most unpopular man in Bavaria, and ms continu-
ance as state commissioner impossible." The reaction in favor of Hitler
was most lively, however, at the University of Munich, even though the
National Socialist movement was principally a popular movement gath-
ering up above all the little people and workers.
On the day after Hitler's imprisonment, a referendum was organized
at the university. Reproducing the official report of this opinion poll will
tell it best: "Meeting at the university: 70 percent for Hitler, 20 percent
von Kahr, 10 percent indifferent The only people listened to are those
speaking in favor of Hitler; the others are booed."
Even in many places outside of Bavaria there were demonstrations in
favor of Hitler. He had not, therefore, lost everything. On the contrary, a
mystique was in the process of being born.
Who knew whether Hitler, going to prison on that icy November day,
may not just then have entered into the golden realm of legend?
Hitler revisits Landsberg Prison in 1924, where he had been kept for 264 days by the
German Republic after leading an early armed revolt against communism in Bavaria,
the so-called Beer Hall Putsch. Later, the Allied occupiers would continue to use the
prison to commit crimes against the German people, executing scores of falsely con•
victed "war criminals" here after 1945. This is an original Hoffmann photograph.
NATIONAL ARCHIVES AND RECORDS ADMINISTRATION
CHAPTER
HITLER GOES ON TRIil FOR TREASON
f I should die, that would simply be an indication that my
'' star has run its course, and that my mission has ended."-
This was another apparently sibylline sentence linking
Adolf Hitler to an esoteric world where powers that reign in
the great beyond direct certain living beings.
Hitler expected to be shot. Charles de Gaulle, in identical circum-
stances, would certainly have put him against the wall. If the generals
Salan, Challe and others were not killed by a firing squad after their failed
Algerian putsch of April 23, 1961, it was not because the desire for it was
lacldng in the vindictive head of the French government. But Gennany's
President Ebert was just a saddler come up in the social scale; and Gumav
Stresemann was overwhehned by his repeated ministerial crises and by
the goiter which hung from his neck like a boa
All things considered, Stresemann rather agreed with Hitler. He heard
the popular rumblings. Annihilated by the congenital weakness of the
parliamentary democracy that had thrown him out of power three times
in four months, he had understood clearly enough that the patriots of the
south of his country had exploded.
"This insurrection," he said to the French ambassador at Berlin on
Nov. 9, 1923, "would not have happened if Gennany's successive govern-
ments, whatever their opinions, had not failed time and again."
He did not hesitate to tell the French diplomat that the invasion of the
Ruhr had been one of the principal causes of the rebellion in his country:
"The gravitation of tlle 1nas.ses toward Conununism or toward racism,

which drew in not just intellectuals but many workers, had its origin in
Cknnany's desperate situation."
This "racism,,, to what did it refer, if not Adolf Hitler's move1nent?
The writer Arthur Moeller van den Bruck,just like Stresemann, recog-
nized the patriotic motives tl\at had anhnated the rebels: "There are many
thin~ tl,at can be said against Hitler. But one thing we shall always be
able to say: He was a fanatic for Germany."
"He was." 111at sounds like a funeral oration.
The New Ym* Times would go still further in the liquidation of Hitler.
At the end of the affair it would write these words: "The Munich putsch
definitely eliminates Hitler and his National Socialist followers."
Hitler thought it hinlSelf for some days. For him, as for every revolu-
tionary, dying politically was worse tl1an dying physically.
To everyone, his star appeared to be shattered in a thousand pieces.
Hitler gave way to despair. To live without a goal, his calling gone, in-
terested him not at all. He went on a hunger strike. In a few days he had
become emaciated and had lackluster eyes. For two weeks he refused to
take any food.
It was two women above all who saved him from dying. One was the
aged Frau Bernstein, who felt a love for him she camouflaged by her
years. She passed herself off as his adoptive mother in order to see him.
But it was Helene Hanfstaengl especially, the intrepid young American,
with whom he had sought refuge on the evening of Nov. 9, who saved
Hitler a second time.
Helene wrote him a stern and feivent letter, telling him again that he
did not have the right to let down those who had fought so hard for him,
above all the National Socialists who had been killed at his side at
Munich. By giving up himself and abandoning them, he would be playing
the game of his opponents.
A third woman as well, learning of Hitler's collapse in spirit, had has-
tened to the Landsberg prison. She was someone who more than anyone
else had the right to talk to him: it was the widow of his friend Max Erwin
von Scheubner-Richter, who was killed in the Residenzstrasse, and who,
by throwing himself on Hitler and dying himself, had saved his life.
This heroic woman, instead of moaning, came to tell Hitler that he too
had to rise above the misfortune, as she was determined to do, and that
she was proud her husband had died for him.
HITLER GOES ON TRIAL FOR TREASON I 299
This nobility in sorrow, this exhortation to take courage, completely

oveiwhelmed Hitler. Not a single wife nor any mother had blamed him for
the death of a husband or a son. They wrote to him or hastened to tell him
tl1at he must continue his fight
"It is a duty de1nanded of me by our martyrs," he said, convinced at
last "I shall perlorm it"
That very evening he agreed to take a bowl of rice. Life for Hitler
began again.
Afourth woman, Wmifred Wagner, Richard Wagner's daughter-in-law,
would also play an important role in his psychic comeback.
She wrote to him, too, and sent him a book of poetry in the inspired
style of the master. She remained fiercely loyal.
"Believe me," she repeatedly said, "Hitler is on the road to power, and,
like Sigfried, the predestined hero in The Valkyrie, he will pull the sword
out of the German oak."
For Hitler, Wagner was the sky, the stars, the immense forces of cre-
ation. Wagner's works permeated his whole being.
He had gone, as on a pilgrimage, to the villa Wahnfried in Bayreuth,
where Cosima, Wagner's 86--year-old widow, was living. He had become
an intimate of the entire fainily of the departed master. He often returned
to Bayreuth, as to an enchanted lake. A few weeks before the putsch he
had spent a day there again, dreaming almost shyly in the garden, in the
library, in Wagner's music room, and had expounded with feeling on the
dreams that stirred within him in great gusts like those that had given Die
Mei.stersinger von Nurnberg to tl1e world.
Winifred's six-year-old daughter later told in a delightful way of these
hours of Hitler's eloquence that she knew when she was little: "His voice
took on tone and color and grew deeper and deeper until we sat like a cir-
cle of little charined birds listening to the music although we didn't pay
any attention to a word he said."
TI1e music of Hitler's vocal cords and the music of Wagner's scores
harmonized with each otl1er in a grandiose blending. Once he was in
prison, Hitler received many tokens of Wmifred's devotion, from wonder-
ful letters with the written characters arranged like musical notes to
earthly comforts such as plum tarts and supplies of paper and pencils.
His friends, too, were unceasing in their efforts to express their con-
fidence in Hitler.
Echoes of popular demonstrations came to him from the outside.
Christinas night of 1923 had been the occasion of manifestations in Mu-

nich revelatory of tl1e most deep-seated feelings. Heinrich Hoffmann, the
photographer, has recounted:
"That ChristJnas a group of Schwabing artists in the movement cele-
brated tl1e holiday season in the Blute Cafewith a perfonnance entitled
Hitler in Prison. The curtain rose on a cell. Snowflakes were falling out-
side a small barred window. A man sat at a desk, face buried in his hands.
And an invisible male chorus was singing Silent Night. Then appeared an
angel, who placed an illuminated Christinas tree on the table. Slowly the
num turned and revealed his face. Many thought it was Hitler himself,
and a half-sob went through the hall. When the lights went up, the pho-
tographers noticed that many men and women were hurriedly hiding
their moist eyes with handkerchiefs."
It was then that Hitler sensed that his trial, instead of finishing him,
could provide an opportunity totally beyond all expectations of trans-
fonning the dock into a fonnidable tribune.
From that moment, the Hitler who had been struck with dismay and
near to taking his own life became once again a different man. Eloquence,
his supreme power, that was stifled in his prison cell, was now at his will
going to burst forth from the court of justice to all of Germany.
Until now he had never had so resounding a platform available t.o him.
Accused, and fired up by the power of his art, he could pass from the role
of accused to that of accuser and tum the courtroom int.o the biggest
meeting hall of the Reich, before hundreds of special newspaper corre-
spondents, and no longer facing five or six thousand people, but with all
of Germany listening.
On Feb. 26, 1924, Hitler's trial got under way in Munich. It was also, in-
deed above all-at least until the eve of the trial-Ludendorfrs trial.
The principal star of tlle putsch and the best known, but not much of
a speaker, Ludendorff quickly got tangled up in his 42 pages of testimony,
which proved a heavy assignment for the audience. At the end of a few
hours, Hitler had put him in tlle shade.
Hitler arrived at Munich in fine fettle. The conclusion of the report of
Dr. Brinsteiner, tlle prison physician, left Hitler's detractors few grounds
for delusion: "Hitler is at all times in control of himself, and his will and
his mental capacity are not impaired by any illness."
He was fit for service, as they say. For 27 days he was going t.o hold
people breathless, in Germany and even abroad.
On the first day of the trial the pretty little Swedish countess who had
married Goering wrote, "Oh, my God, help him that all may end well."
"All Gennany, if not the world," writes Toland, the American historian,
"was watching Munich on the morning of Feb. 26."
"I choose, like Goethe, the hammer and not the anvil," Hitler declared.
He entered the courtroo1n completely confident. ImmediatelY, like a
perceptive strategist, instead of bracing himself to make a defense, he
went on the attack. He took full responsibility for the putsch. Proudly,
according to some reporters. Boastfully, according to otheIS. But there
was no question with him of pleading extenuating circtunc;tances or mak-
ing a bid for commiseration. He had not been a rebel, but a defender of
the honor and the unity of the Reich.
"Everyone," he cried, "raises his hand to swear that he did not know
about anything, that he had no plan, that he didn't mean to do anything.
'111ey don't have the courage to assu1ne responsibility for their actions, to
stand before the judges and proclaim, yes, that is just what we wanted.
\Ve wanted to overthrow the government."
He was proclaiming it in a voice of thunder: "I consider myself the
best of Gennans. '111e people have been betrayed. Many a time the Berlin
government has compelled an entire victorious army to bend the knee
and lay down its arms in order to offer up the ancient territory of the
Reich as a pasture for the Jews and international bankers. The people
are exploited. All the nations of the world have pounced on them like a
flock of rapacious ravens, with tl1e abetrnent of those who profess to be
the government of the Reich."
Thus Hitler was t:aking a bold and aggressive stance such as the public
likes. Some of his statements were debatable. For all it continued to hold
out heroically at the end of the autunm of 1918, was the Gennan anny still
indisputably the strongest at that time? Had not Ludendorff himself,
Hitler's companion in the dock, advised the govemrnent by telegraph to
seek a compromise and to be open to peace negotiations?
But the phrase "dagger thrust in the back" had struck home. Hitler,
the avenger, made it resound in the courtroom. The audience listened
transfixed. They even burst into cheers.
"But he's a colossal fellow, this Hitler," one of the judges had mur-
mured under his breath, but not so low that it was not heard by the press
correspondents.
"How," the accused went on, "how can I be treated as a criminal when
nay nlission is to lead Gennany back to its proper position of honor in tl1e
world'?" He presented hilnself as a messenger of destiny. Not as the leader
who denies his actions but as one proud of what he has done.
On the second day it was tl1e tum at the bar of Kahr, Lossow and
Sei$er, the n1en who-like Hitler and before Hitler-had n1eant to cany
out a CO'ltp d'etat against Berlin, but at tl1e saine time also against the unity
of tl1e Reich. Their coup d'etat got under way, it will be reme1nbered,
when von Kahr, on Sept 26, 1923, had rebelled against the constitution,
and when Gen. von lo$ow a few days later had taken a silnilar action
against the con1mander-in-chief of tl1e Reichswehr.
On the night of Nov. 8, seeing tl1emselves beaten to the punch by Hit-
ler's bold coup, they had rallied in support of the putsch, giving Hitler the
accolade before 3,000 witnesses.
Two hours later they had gone back on their word, deceiving Luden-
dorfI and attempting to cllinb back on their perch, only to go down tl1em-
selves, Izjected by everyone, a few days after the failure of the putsch.
Doubly traitors-to both Germany and to Ludendorff-they pre-
tended before the court to be innocent victims of a kind of terrorism. Of
their own coup d'etat, which had been in full swing for several weeks,
they breathed not a word. It was strictly a matter of this 1niserable Hitler
who, using threats, had involved them in his crazy enterprise. They them-
selves had done nothing but "put on an act" A pretty strange act, with
von Lossow clicking his heels before Ludendorff and von Kahr fratemi7r
ing witl1 Hitler on the platform of the beer garden.
"A moment of national greatness," Gen. Ludendorff had exclai.tned in
their midst
And now that they were driven to explain their behavior, the runaways
of the historic night of Nov. 9, 1923 tried to pa$ themselves off as just
small fry who had only yielded to foree.
They contradicted themselves before the court when von Lossow de-
scribed Hitler-who had so easily involved them -as "being of limited in-
telligence and mediocre in any case."
"Mr. President," Hitler asked, "what weight can be given to the testi-
mony of a Gennan officer who has gone back on his word of honor?"
Lossow: "I was threatened with a revolver."
Hitler: "\Vhat must we think of a German general who1n a mere re-
volver can subdue?"
Von Lossow withdrew, defeated. He felt terribly ill-used.
Judge Neithardt thought it necessary to be indignant at the thrashing

Hitler had just administered: "Your behavior is a personal insult"
Hitler, snliling: "I accept tl1e reprimand."
The judge had felt obliged at every tum to call for silence in the court-
roon1, which was applauding Hitler much too vociferously.
Soisson, the historian, described the atmosphere of the court as fol-
lows: "In the courtroom, he is virtually the one conducting the trial. He in-
terrupts the judges, launches into vehement diatribes, accuses, refutes.
The courtroom is hanging on his every word."
Great Britain's foremostjoumalist, Ward Price, who attended the trial,
wrote: "Every syllable burst forth sharply, and when Hitler raised his im-
perious voice, the little judge, president of tlle court, was so frightened in
the nliddle of tlle bench tllat his white wig trembled until he had to hold
onto it witl1 his hand to keep it still."
The major newspapers, reluctantly to be sure, gave Hitler's harangues
an interest and excite1nent tl1at day by day increased.
Newspaper headlines reproduced Hitler's words in all of Germany-
a fantastic public forum. Before tl1e putsch, Hitler was known only to
some of the Bavarians. Now all of Gennany, down to the last village, de-
voured the reports of a hundred daily papers and kept their ears glued to
their radios.
Newspape1'S throughout Gennany devoted column.~ to him. The name
of Hitler can1e out of the shadows, became stored in memories, grew to
encompass tl1e nation. The attempted coup d'etat, which was ridiculed
outside of Germany by calling it the "beer hall putsch," was seen in a dif-
ferent light
Thus, even beyond the borders of the Reich, Hitler was becoming a
person of importance. What would it not have been if television had ex-
isted then?
In any case, in tl1e endeavor to destroy Hitler, he had just been made
known to tens of millions of Germans and foreigners. The star was
launched.
\Vhat was going on in the minds of the judges at the center of tl1is hur-
ricane of eloquence? We may be certain that pfe$ures were built up--
against Hitler and perhaps also in his favor.
Hitler had followers even in judicial circles. The Bavarian Minister of
Justice Gessler, future minister ofjustice of the Third Reich, probably en-
deavored to influence some members of tl1e tribunal and of the jury. But
otl1er Bavarian 1ninisters no doubt acted in a contrary direction. On

March 4, 1924 tl1e Bavarian Council of Ministers took it upon themselves,
despite the doctrine of the separation of powers, to criticize Judge Nei-
thardt while the trial was at its height
Three Cabinet ministers furiously rebuked the court; a fourth minist;er
even boast;ed of having "personally censured the chief justice of the tri-
bunal for having pennitted Hitler to speak for four hours consecutively."
"It is impo&gble to keep Hitler from talking," replied the haples.5 judge,
at a loss, his robe damp from so much eloquence.
The position of the court was all the more delicate because some very
important people in Berlin had even all but stated that the accused were
in the right
On the very day of the putsch, Stresemann was head of the Berlin gov-
ernment Hitler specifically meant to liquidate. But this same Stresemann,
while the trial was still going on, wrote in the newspaper Zeit these lines
almost of absolution: "The Munich trial will one day be of great impor-
tance for the historian. It will depict better than any other document the
anguish of the Gennan soul. The men who are appearing before the court
of law down there certainly believe they have had the good of the nation
and the Reich at heart."
He added: "In all these national movements, there is much that is
good, that is truly Gennan. That the young people in their exaltation tllink
like Hitler and Ludendorff is understandable." Stresemann was sorry
about it, but he understood.
The judges at Munich felt they were in over their heads. They were
receiving threatening letters from students. The three jurors, who with
the three magistrates made up the court of justice, were not very coop-
erative, it was plain to see. They even had an air of rejoicing on hearing
Hitler's sallies.
The court had no choice but to exercise forbearance and try to cut its
losses.
When it came time for the chief prosecutor to pronounce his indict-
ment., he went so far as to compliment Hitler on his unique eloquence
and on his personal and public life.
"He has always," the magistrate stated, "led a spotless private life, and
in view of the solicitations to which he was naturally subject as an often
honored party leader, that merits special emphasis."
He continued: "Hitler is a highly gifted man who, from modest begin-
rungs, has achieved by his seriousness and relentless labors a respected

position in public life. He has unstintingly sacrificed himself for the ideas
he believes in, and he has amply fulfilled his duty as a soldier. He cannot
be blamed for taldng advantage of the situation which has come about."
The chief prosecutor all but requested tl1e Cross of Merit for Hitler.
Such being his frame of mind, Hitler no longer had any motive for
being modest. His accuser himself proclaimed that he had exceptional
gifts. His duty was to make use of them.
He had never conceived of his mission in any light otl1er than in the ca-
pacity of leader of the people.
At the time of the Munich trial, when he was just the defeated
putschist of Nov. 9, his faitl1 ren1ained unshaken.
He proclaimed it in open court without regard for tl1ose who sneered:
wnte man who feels called upon to govern a people has no right to say: If
you want me or summon me, I shall co1ne. No, his duty orders him to as-
sert hhnself."
Hitler hrurunered out his words: "From the very beginning I aimed a
thousand times higher than obtaining a Cabinet post. I consider it unwor-
thy of a great man to wish to pass into posterity merely by becoming a
minister. I have ahned at becorning the destroyer of Marxism. I an1 going
to accomplish that task, and then, for me, t11e title of minister will be ru1
absurdity.n
Joachiln Fest, the German journalist-historian, could not hide his
amazement:
The assurance with which he passed himself off as a great

1nan and defended his point of view as if it were a matter of
course, tile tone in which he exalted his own person did not fail
to make a big impression straight off and to make him the cyno-
sure of the trial.
A mere provincial putsch provoked in Bavaria by an autono-
mist secession, m1d before you knew it he had hoisted himself up
to the highest national level. Any Gennan whosoever could read
his remarks: He hadn't fought in Munich just to ward off a sepa-
ratist threat, but to replace Marxism with the great national and
social revolution that would reconcile the classes and reestablish
the greatness of the nation.
The intuitive m1d provocative assurance with which Hitler
faced the trial must be credited as being among his most impres-
sive political successes. It was his own personal gifts that trans-
fonned the fiasco of the putsch into a triumph.
Nobody ever before had the arrogance when beat.en and in prison thus
to present hin~elf as the future builder of a new world.
Hitler, someone quite other than a Ludendorff now put in the shade,
or a Lossow who took a flogging in the course of his deposition, even
dared to appeal directly to the army, the army that had not fired on the
putschists and which, he exclaimed, would one day form a bloc with the
National Socialist.
"I am convinced that the hour will come when the masses who today
gather around our swastika banner in the street will unite with those who
fired upon them. When I learned that it was the municipal police that fired
on us, I felt happy that it was not the Reichswehr that had thus demeaned
itself. The Reichswehr remains as free of any pollution, as spotless as be-
fore. One day it will stand wholly at our side, officers and men alike."
An ever-growing crowd-thousands of persons-occupied the square
before the court house. On the day of the sentence, the first ofApril, 1924,
women scattered flowers about the courtroom in such quantities that it
was necessary to order the ushers to take them away.
The cell Hitler occupied at Munich during the trial became a "pastry
shop."
The frenzy was such that young women asked for the favor of slipping
into the prisoner's bathtub. It was with great difficulty that this wave of
would-be bathers was turned away.
To be sure, these young women were delirious. But would there have
been at that same momenta single Gennan woman in the entire Reich re-
questing permission to stretch out in Herr Ebert's bathtub, or in Herr Stre-
semann's?
There was never another stat.esman in the world who had, as Hitler
did, millions of fanatical female admirers. The mob is a woman, and Hitler
had captured it as one captures a woman.
Hitler had the last word. Whatever opinion his opponents may hold of
him nearly a century afterward, his peroration will remain one of the most
famous pages in the book of Gennan eloquence.
Without raising his voice and almost without gestures, he spoke, be-
yond his judges, to the future and to history:
The army we have formed grows larger from day to day. I have
tl1e proud hope that one day the hour will come when these rough
companies will become battalions, when these battalions will be-
come regiments and the regiments divisions; when the old cock-
ade will be lifted up from the mire where it now lies; when the old
flags will wave again; when a reconciliation will be born at the
great lastjudgment we are prepared to face. For it is not you, gen-
tlemen, who judge us; it is the eternal court of history that will
pronounce our sentence. I know what yours will be. But the court
of which I speak will not ask us: have you committed an act of
high treason or not? That court will judge us, the quartermaster
general of the old anny and us, his officers and soldiers, as Ger-
mans who have wished only to fight and die.
You are welcome to declare us a thousand times guilty. The
goddess of the eternal court of histocy will smile and tear in little
pieces the indictment of your public prosecutor as well as the
judgment which you will pronounce. For she will acquit us.
It was a feat of enormous self-assurance. Hitler's anny before Dec. 9,

1923 comprised around 60,000 supporters. How many were left in April
1924? But Hitler was a soothsayer. He saw in the distance the legions on
the march; he could already hear the tramp of their feet
Shortly thereafter, sentence was passed.
First of all, the court set aside the request for extradition tllat would
be a threat to Hitler at various times right up to 1932. "It is unthinkable,"
the court decided, "that a soldier who has fought so brave]y for Germany
should be deported."
As for the penalties inflicted, they were relatively light and caine near
to not being pronounced at all. The jury had flatly refused to render aver-
dict of guilty. To get them to accept a sentence-a vecy small one in such
a case-it was necessary to promise them that a remission of the sen-
tence would be granted after a very brief tenn which they fixed them-
selves at six months. Ludendorff was acquitted and was rather displeased
by it He had done at least as much as the National Socialists who had
been ldlled just a few feet fro1n him on Nov. 9, 1923. It looked as if tlley
,vere doing him a favor in acquitting him.
Hitler, like his principal co1npanions, received asentence offive years,
308 I IIITLEH DEMOCRAT
years he knew would not all have three hundred and sixty-five days. As
for the crowds, tl1e people, tl1ey were celebrating. So 1nuch so that Hitler
had to make an appearance at a window of the courthouse. Never before
in the history of tl1e world had one seen the like: a condenmed man, in the
presence of his judges and his guards, goes over to a window, opens it,
salutes tl1e crowd tl1at is cheering him and waving flowers.
"Once again," Fest wrote laconically, "tl1e goverrunent had lost the
match."
This victory included a threefold lesson.
First, Hitler had co1nprehended tllat more tllan force was needed to
gain 111astery of the state.
Second, he could attain power only through tl1e support of the people,
after he had convinced them and brought them into tl1e fold, and while re-
specting the existing laws. That would take time-perhaps, he said then,
as much as 10 years.
Third, a new govenuuent was not put togetl1er on the spur of the mo-
n1ent It was necessary first of all to f01n1 cadres, to have worthy men
available who were highly trained for their future n~ion.
Hitler would soon bless tlle failure tl1at had allowed him to reach each
and every citizen of his future Reich tllrough tl1e gigantic and unhoped-
for publicity of the trial. And he would bless equally the lessons tl1at the
experience had taught hi.In.
"I thank tl1e fate that denied us victory in 1923. How would we have
gone about setting up the new government? There were not enough of
us, and we were not experienced enough. I'd have been forced once
again to rely on the bourgeoisie. That would have ended in a heartrend-
ing failure. Instead of remaking the Reich, we'd have been limited to
changing its trade name," Hitler said.
"The unsuccessful putsch was a great good fortune for us," he added.
Fest, the least amiable of historians, would have to adnlit it: "Hitler
had been as.5ured of a preponderant role thanks to the defeat. The 9th of
November was the day of tlle breakthrough."
hnprisonment was also going to give Hitler an entire year of providen-
tial meditation tl1at he would never otllerwise have had.
"During my in1prisonment I had the thne to provide n1y philosophy
witll a natural, historical foundation.
"The authorities had 1nade a mistake by imprisoning me. TI1ey would
have been far wiser to let n1e make speeches all the tune, without giving
Adolf Hitler leaves Landsberg Prison on Dec. 20, 1934, after serving 264 days of a five-
year sentence. Though convicted of "treason" for his efforts to defend the Bavarian
state against communism, his sentence was commuted by National Socialist support-
ers in the German government who recognized that Hitler's actions had been moti-
vated by the highest of ideals.
n1e rune to breatl1e."

Thanks to tl1e1n, Hitler would be able calmly to fonnulate his beliefs
in Mein Ka.mvf and prepare his future strategy.
He had renounced forever coups d'etat by force in the manner of a
Scheide1nann, Liebknecht or Kapp. Hencefortl1 he would stick rigorously
to the de1nocratic reality, basing all power on the consent of tl1e people.
TI1at consent could just as readily be granted by the voters to an au-
tholitatian de1nocracy, which was his choice, as to a parlirunentary
democracy: He had seen the latter's hann.ful effects ru1d 1neant to relieve
the Gennan people of that fom1 of government.
It ,vas a tnlly ru1d rationally de1nocratic Hitler who walked out of the
~.lunich courtl1ouse on Aplil 1, 1924.
Millions of Germans turned out to protest against the Treaty of Versailles after it was
learned that the leaders of the newly elected socialist-leaning government had be-
trayed them to their paymasters In the capitalist West and the newly formed Soviet
state in Russia The surrender of Germany during World War I was largely the result
of communist agitation behind the German lines: agitation led by the Bolsheviks. Iron-
ically, one of the reasons the Bolsheviks rose to power was due to German intelligence
efforts and the defeat of the czar's forces in World War I.
CHAPTER
THE TRAPSETTERS OF GENEVA
or years Gennany had gone fro1n one deferred payinent date

to the next like a businessman being hounded by his credi-
tors. She was foundering under the political and financial in-
junctions of a slave treaty worse even than the treatment
accorded the tribes of Africa in tl1e preceding century. Thir-
teen years after tl1e Treaty of Versailles, Gennany was still dragging her
convict's ball and chain. TI1e tribunal of the victors had been moved from
the Versailles Palace of Vengeance to Geneva, a Calvinist watering place
as cold as the fish in its lake.
The justices" were seated there in a large and quite ordinary building
that was constructed for them at great cost: tl1e Palace of the League of
Nations. The League of Nations was a sort of clainorous and colorful lay
council where hundreds of representatives of presu1nably civilized coun-
tries met in grand array for a few months each year, for the purpose, the-
oretically, of deciding the great problems of the world, but devoting
the1uselves in fact to unrestrained agitation about a dying issue.
For a long time Gem1any had not been able to participate in these con-
claves. She was the black sheep. Her presence had been tolerated only
since 1927, after an eight-year period of ruthless sterilization. Thereafter
she sent representatives to Geneva, who were not as well treated as tl1e
men who delivered coal to the building or swept its stairs. Awhole sterile
world had its existence within tl1e league, a world where all were engaged
in a feverish whirl of ftuitless activity, doomed inevitably to fail. The del-
egates were of all kinds. Sly old politicians surrounded by loquacious

Egerias who had been somebody in tl1e tl1eater half a century earlier and
aspired once again to cut a figure, tltls time offstage, with their moth-
eaten and heavily painted channs; diplon1ats grown gray in the ambassa-
dorial service, experts in boring people to death and witl1out equal in
setting traps; oriental princes recently promoted, all agleam with trin-
ketry, and leading a grand retinue of attendants at the expense of tlle in-
telligence service, which traded its banknotes for their oil; Hondurans,
Costa Ricans, West Indians, both gloomy and boisterous; and Etlliopians
witll a strong odor of antllropophagy about tllem. Altogetller, tlley gave
tl1is congress tlle aspect of a very costly zoological garden where the an-
imals were singularly lacking in beauty.
It was to tllem, however, tllat the 'Ireaty of Versailles had assigned the
role of dictating to tlle world. It had soon revealed itself to be incapable
and powerless in every respect Yet it was tlle league which had been sup-
posed to regulate the return to international life of a German state that
had been given lavish promises that it would ertjoy full and equal rights.
Gennany would be treated witll tlle same consideration, for example, as
tllat given the government of Haiti, which constituted immense progress;
for her recognition had been put off year after year, just as tlle establish-
ment of tlle general disarmament which recognition implied had been
postponed. And tl1is willfully sterile assembly would still be engaged in
the same deafening cock-a-doodle-<ioo and muddleheadedjabber when,
on Jan. 30, 1933, the new Chancellor of the Reich, Hitler, rose on tlle po-
litical horizon, a new and unknown force to be reckoned with.
There had been a brief period of waiting since his accession to power.
First of all, Hitler had been engaged, at a gigantic cost in effort, in rebuild-
ing Gennany's econoinY, in putting 2,600,000 men back to work in 1933
and giving them renewed pride in living. Meanwhile, tlle sentilnents oc-
cupying Gennany's neighbors were divided between envy and apprehen-
sion. Up to that point, everyone outside the Reich had treated Gennany
like a frayed doonnat She had been dismembered. Tens of thousands of
square kilometers of her territory had been taken from her. Tun million
Gennans of formerly Gennanic lands had been put under foreign rule,
despite all tlle pledges of "a free choice of tlle people" made on Nov. 11,
1918 in the signed armistice.
The Saar had been reduced to the status of a Western colony. The soil
of the Reich had been occupied beyond the Rhine; control of her rivers
THE TRAPSEITERS OF GENEVA I 313
Reich President Hindenburg is here seen leading a procession in which he is to an-

nounce the appointment of Adolf Hitler as Reich Chancellor. Hitler officially took power
in this office on Jan. 30, 1933, though he continued to share the government with Hin-
denberg until August 1934. FEDERAL GERMAN ARCHIVE 102--00783
and ports had been seized; her railroads and her national bank had been
mortgaged; and her entire tenit.ocy had been put under tl1e thwnb of 1,800
Allied militruy inspectors. An utterly impossible tribute had been imposed
on her for a period extending two-tllirds of a centucy. Any possibility she
nlight have had for trade had been destroyed by enormous taxes on her
exports. And she was ju1nped on at tl1e slightest breach. On three occa-
sions punitive expeditions had been sent into Germany. In Januacy of
1923, over a simple matter of an incomplete delivecy of telegraph poles,
the French troops of Raymond Poincare had invaded tlle Ruhr, stripped
the region of its entire stock of coal, bnitally put down worker protests
and brought tl1e entire Reich to a monetary collapse. Despite all that, de-
mands on Gem1any for intolerable indemnity pay111ents continued.
To meet tl1en1, Gennany had taken out one foreign loan after another,
leading ultimately, after the worldwide crash of 1929, to financial catas-
trophe, a 50 percent decrease in her industrial activity, and a suffocating
increase in une1nployinent The 1919 'lreaty of Versailles, a treaty of rap-
ine and a treaty of vengeance, had thus for nearly 15 years kept a proud
and industrious people---and in population, tl1e first in all of Europe--in
314 I lllTLEH DEMOCRAT
a state of servitude and near annihilation.

\Vhen it was already too late, the e1nbarras.5ed experts had tiied to
mollify Gennany with tl1e application of soothing plasters in tl1e fonn of
the Dawes and Young plans, which did slightly reduce the fantastic bur-
den placed on Gennany's back but extended it for 1nore than a half-cen-
tury. In 1987, the distant descendants of the defeated c0111batants of 1918
would still have to empty tl1eir pockets to fill the coffers of nations that
were not only rolling in wealth but hogging tl1e colonial resources of a
third of tl1e world besides. Gennany was strangling. The politicians of
tJ1e Wein1ar Republic had protested over and over again at tllis treatment
But always in vain. TI1eir status as tempor3ly electees, as ten1porary min-
isters, as deputies bounced by partisan struggles fro1n one c1isis t.o an-
otl1er (anew "democratic" government in Gennany evecy eight montl1s)
had elinlinated any chance they might have had for continuity, for effec-
tivene$ in resisti.ng the irtjtmctions fron1 abroad. Some, like Stresemann,
had fought courageously to render the victors less unreasonable, but after
12 years of futile effort, Gennany's situation was still miserable. In fact,
it had grown worse from one year to the next
It was onlyjust barely that Gennany had managed, at the London Con-
ference in 1931, to obtain the consent of tl1e Allies for their evacuation of
the Rhine provinces after 12 years of harsh 1nilitaly occupation. And
those provinces, moreover, had several tilnes narrowly escaped being
separated from the rest of Gennany foilowing autono1nist intrigues pur-
sued by tJ1e French secret sezvice and heavily subsidized by the French
governmenl In January of 1933, that is to say after 14 years, the League
of Nations in Geneva had still never even seliously addressed the essen-
tial point of Gennany's case: tl1e ilnplementation of world disannrunent.
Yet the Treaty of Versailles had fonnally established that once Gennany
had been disanned, all the other cotmtries would h1 tum automatically
disann. The pledge had been a categorical one, signed by every one of the
victors in 1919.
Ever since 1927 the Allied Militacy Coffilnission, 01nnipresent in Ger-
many and finicky in the extreme, had officially recognized that Germany
had been completely disanned. TI1e head of the conunission, the French
Gen. Nollet, had so signified in writing. TI1e fune had tJ1erefore con1e for
the other cotmtries to disann in their tum, assuming tJ1eir word and sig-
nature had any value.
As would be seen, they didn't have. For six long years, from 1927 to
THE TRAPSETIERS OF GENEVA I 315
1933, U1e Europe of Geneva waltzed tlu-ough an endl~ succes.gon of

swindles, since none of the victors had any intention of diset1S.5ing either
the size of tl1eir annies or tl1eir arsenals. For them it was not a question
of disanning, but of taking part in tl1e make-believe of disannamenl In
1927, when it was quite evident that Germany had disanned, the League
of Nations contented itself witl1 forming a "Preparatory Disarmament
Committee."
A conunittee has always and everywhere been a hypocritical way of
avoiding difficulties while buying time. The committee in question had
accordingly spent five years dozing and sitting on its hands. From time to
time it had stirred, pronounced a few sententious words, then quickly
gone back to sleep. By the fall of 1932, thanks to this prolonged sabotage,
the "Preparatory Disarmainent Conuuittee" had gotten absolutely
nowhere; had prepared only a vague and totally usel~ negotiation plan.
In the meanfune six years had been frittered away.
TI1at was what the dw1uny conunittee had intended. And obtained.
In 1932, however, in the League of Nations, it was high time they kept
their word. Exasperated by the coldly deliberate disregard by the Allied
Powers of their soleffiil conunitments, Germany was leaning more and
more to,vard Hitlerian solutions. Hitler was making it loud and clear that
once in power he would break the chains of Versailles, and already mil-
lions of his con1patriots were applauding him ai1d foilowing him. H they
,vished to keep Hitler fron1 reaching the chancellecy, it was essential that
they provide, ai1d as soon as p~ible, some visible succ~ or other to
strengthen Ge11nai1y's "de1nocratic" regilne, which was reeling and ready
to collapse. And the success of any such rescue operation could alone be
ensured by a definitive and public recognition of the famous "equal rights"
that had already been agreed to in fonn to the German govenunent, but
never conceded in fact.
The equality would beco1ne effective only witl1 the realization of a
general suppression of annaments worldwide, as the Treaty of Versailles
had ordered. To continue quibbling about that was to consign the Weimar
"den1ocracy" to destruction and to open wide to Hitler the door to power
after having pennanently discredited his opponents. Now it would be
seen whether so1ue nlini.tnun1 of "democratic" solidarity actually existed,
or whether the oft-tnm1peted principle of equality was n1erely a farce.
After so many years wasted in 1uealy-1nouthed hypocrisies, the Disar-
mament Conference 1net with this end in view on Feb. 2, 1932 in Geneva
The chainuan of tl1e conference, British Foreign Secretary Arthur Hen-

derson, was perhaps tl1e only European fully aware of tlle imminence of
collapse of tl1e "Gennan democracy" if the sabotage of the disarmament
continued much longer. "I refuse to accept for a single instant that this
conference might fail," he exclaimed to the 250 delegates, "because its
failure would have consequences too tenible to contemplate." Henderson
"refused to accept," but soon he would have to accept.
From tlle first day, it was evident tllat they intended to take no action.
The preliminary plan of tlle disannament convention was not even intro-
duced for discl.1$ion by the assembly. Sixty-two countries were repre-
sented, making up a mixed medley of tlle most disparate, nay, the most
opposit.e interests. Each one had his own particular annaments to pro-
tect: tlle British, tlleir ships; the French, their Maginot Line, a long, anned
concrete barrier tlley had been building on their eastern border since
1926 at tlle cost of billions, right under tlle noses of the disarmed Ger-
mans. That was how they had "disanned." Anyone who tried to untangle
that skein of egoism was sure to run into the stubborn opposition of each
of tlle competitors. Not to act was becoming an obligation on the part of
tlle league. Then, too, someone hastened to declare that the experts--
who had taken five years to bring forth just a few paragraphs, and those
at once judged dangerous-were irresponsible specialists, and tl1at tlle
250 delegates of tlle 62 countries were the only ones truly able to act re-
sponsibly.
Inst.earl of making a decision, tlle assembly decided to start again fron1
the beginning. The "provisory committee" declared that notions had
changed with regard to annaments. Airplanes flew higher than fonnerly.
Bombs were more deadly. Tanks advanced more rapidly. They now fired
twice as fast It was important, tllerefore, to examine these new modifi-
cations witll the greatest care-a new waste of time guaranteed. In order
to entangle still further any discussion, tlle assembly decided to create a
series of "committees" with partial aims.
So no conclusion could be reached by any of them, and t11e whole
thing would be brought back again for consideration. This interweaving
of negotiations could have no other effect than to turn tl1e disannament
problem into an inextricable thicket. Maximum fragmentation was tl1e
order of the day. A "Chemical Anns Committee" was fonned where dis-
cussion of the noxious effects of such weapons was bound to be pro-
longed indefinitely. There was a "Manpower Committee," open to
THE TRAPSE'rfERS OF GENEVA I 317
endless disputes about national contingents and colonial contingents; a

"Morals Conunittee"; a "General Committee"; a "Political Committee"; a
"Land Coininittee"; an "Air Co1nmittee"; a "Naval Committee"; an "Ex-
penditures Co1nmittee"; a "Committee of Jurists"; and even-this was
the crowning touch-an "Artistic Corrunittee" that would surely go back
to Leonardo da Vinci to study his early sketches of types of cannons and
airplanes. These multiple cormnittees were of course amply provided
witl1 subconunittees.
And hundreds of delegates were thus assured of having juicy jobs in
Geneva for a long time to come. Except that the Geneva softjobs factory
,vas sure to collapse on that many soft job seekers. Benoist-Mechin, the
French historian, shocked at so much fn.1itless commotion, declared that
it could have served as the scenario of a comedy by Moliere. After the
discussion was all over, he added: "Now, when I follow the work of the
conference itself, my desire to laugh goes away. My heart sinks when I
leaf tlU'ough the file documents one after another, because the specter of
,var rises ever 1nore clearly out of tllis enonnous pile of projects and con-
tradictory state1nents. There will be a tragedy at the end of tllis farce, be-
cause there is always a tragedy at the end of human st1.1pidity." (Benoist
Mecltln, Histoire de l'A1mee allemande, vol. ill, p. 123.) Stupidity said it
all. There was a conviction ainong tl1e ranks of the fom1er allies tl1at any-
thing and everything was allowed, that Gem1any would swallow down
each succeeding platter of snakes as if it were sauerkraut
In that decisive year of 1932 the principal partners were not yet even
able to say-or did not wish to say-1ust what a general disaiman1ent, to
their minds, would have to consist of. "Equalization of forces at the lowest
level," the Italians proposed.
"Proportional reduction," the Norwegians replied.
"Contingent on the principles of security," added the Alnericans.
"Bearing on which weapons?" the French wanted to lmow.
"In any case and above all not on the fleet," answered the Blitish, who
,vere very detennined not to reduce tl1eir fleet, the most J?OWerful in the
,vorld, by so much as a rowboat.
It was unbelievable, but tl1at's the way it was.
It was thus quite evident tl1at no one in Geneva dared come to the
point They preferred intenninable discussions of mortar calibers and
cruiser tonnages, shunting aside any discussion of the essential prob-
lem. Fron1 the second of February to tl1e 22nd of April of 1932-tl1at is
to say, only nine n1onths before Hitler's triumph-they had taken not a
single step forward. The League of Nations had fallen back on a resolu-
tion according to which the delegates of the 62 nations left it to the
"competent conmlittees" to "decide which weapons were the most
specifically offensive weapons." (Resolution of the "General Commit-
tee" of April 22, 1932.) Easter was approaching. What a relief. Evecy-
body dropped his documents and went on vacation. The Germans were
ntade to drag on through one quibble after another. Once again they had
been trapped and swindled.
After their vacations, the hundreds of petty bigwigs of the league had
turned up in Geneva again, dallying and bustling about, flanked by their
retinues of skirt-swishing secretaries who were decidedly more inter-
ested in the little gifts and exquisite dinners provided by their elderly em-
ployers than in the keyboards of their typewriters. Geneva had come alive
and was swanning again. "Tangled and irksome proceedings pursued in
an atmosphere of anything but sincerity," Minister Tardieu, one of the
principal French "negotiators," was to remember. The Italian, Grandi, one
of the rare level-headed delegates to the conference, proclaimed: "Anna-
ments either represent a threat to peace and do so for all the st.ates; or
else they pose no threat of war and hence threaten no one. In which case
there is nothing for it but to dissolve the conference."
And, indeed, since its uselessness became evecy day more glaringly
apparent, preparations were being made to dissolve it. It was then, when
they were about to raise the aspergillum to solemnize the interment, that
a staunch American intervened.
CHAPTER
AN AMERICAN AT THE
1932 GENEVA CONFERENCE
eople in the United States are realists. They don't take months
deciding what to do about a hair floating in the soup. Presi-
dent Herbert Hoover, upon reading the stack of reports from
his delegate, had realized quite clearly that no decision was
ever going to come out of all that empty chatter in Geneva.
General disannarnent was, would be, and would forever remain an em-
bryo and die before it was born. Waste still more time? Since any kind of
global accord was a chimera, why not bring the discussion back to basic
principles, linked to something achievable? Any statesman would have
reasoned the same way. It is better to save what you can than see every-
thing go down the drain.
With the good sense and psychology of the average American, who is
direct in business matters and knows how to extract the possible from
the impo~ible, Hoover scribbled a dozen lines that his delegate would
have to read from the rostrum of the Disannarnent Conference, following
innumerable reports droned out uselessly in Geneva by the hundreds of
specialists in calculated tergiversation.
The text of the president of the United States was clear and precise as
patrol orders for a ~ion. Mr. Hoover proposed that they climb down
out of the clouds back to earth and confine themselves to a few resolu-
tions he thought acceptable to everyone. Mr. Gibbons took only three
minutes to read the proposals of his government to the Geneva denizens
320 I IIITLER DEMOCRAT
of cloud-cuckoo-land, who were apparently disposed to admire, but de-

tennined in advance to agree to notl1ing. This was the Hoover plan:
I. In re ground forces: reduction in nu1nbers by one-third,

,vitl1 each nation entitled in addition to a police force proportional
to tl1e average allowed to Gennany by the peace treaties. Total
elinlination of assault tanks and heavy rutillery.
2. In re naval forces: eliinination of one-third of the tonnage
and ntunber of battlesllips; of one-fourth of tl1e tonnage in aircraft
carriers, cntisers and destroyers; and of one-tltlrd of the tonnage
in submarines. Extension of tl1e Treaty of London to the French
and Italian naval forces.
3. In re air forces: elinlination of all bo1nbers and prohibition
of all aerial bombardment
The Americans were 1neritorious in proposing measures that were

bound to llit tl1emselves very hard as well. Mr. Gibbons courteously
pointed tl1at out when he had finished reading the proposals: "I 1nust e1n-
phasize how great a sacrifice my country would be agreeing to if this plan
were adopted, because it would oblige us to destroy 1nore than 300,000
tons of shipping, n1ore tl1ru1 l,OOO pieces of heavy rutillery, 900 tanks, and
300 bombers."
Now, suddenly, they were all driven into a comer. If they did not ac-
cept even paitial reductions in armrunents, how could the public be
brought to believe that the ~embly would ever agree to a general disar-
mrunent? It would soon be eight yeru'S of pronlising it every session wlille
proceeding from loophole to loophole. Had the Geneva delegates n1erely
intended to gain son1e time? To lead the public astray? To 1nake a mock-
ery of the equal rights they had fonnally acknowledged to the Gennan
people? That's what the public would believe if they walked out now.
The ordeal by fire was at hand. Who would approach the glowing
coals? Gennany, who might have waited for tl1e Allies to put tl1eir cards
on the table, voted her approval immediately. Italy did the saine. England
as.5umed the face of a sibyl. She did not dare admit tl1at tl1e idea of having
to eliminate a third of her fleet filled her witl1 horror. Not a tltlrd, not a sin-
gle ton. But then, why for so many years had Great Britain gravely partic-
ipated in a conference that had theoretically been assigned the rni.$ion
of cutting back all navies, notjust by one tllird but by three thirds? France
AN AMERICAN AT THE 1932 GENEVA CONFERENCE I 321
had still less desire to acquiesce. As far as she was concerned, there was
no question, not for a single moment, of acceding to any disarmament
whatsoever, and no matter how partial.
The French are naturally clever with words. To go headlong against
President Hoover's proposal was fraught with risk. France, though rich as
Croesus, owed tons of gold to the United St.ates. It was a matter therefore
of saying a "yes" tJ1at would in reality be a "no." Every Frenchman is a daz-
zling master in tJ1at sort of exercise. When he smothers you, it is with
flowers. The French delegate tilus eloquently praised "tile seductive sim-
plicity" of the Hoover plan, but, he added sorrowfully, "the problems were
complex; the proposals could not be accepted in their entirety; a few
minor corrections would no doubt be necessary ... ; moreover, the arma-
n1ent reductions 1nust continue to be tied in with tile international secu-
rity organization. . . ." "It was a polished demurrer," French historian
Benoist-Mechin concluded, "witil all tile customary precautions." (Op.
cit., p. 329.)
The argun1ent of "international security" was wortJ1 precisely nothing.
We may well wonder how the annament of tile Reich at that time could
possibly have disturbed international security. Germany no longer had
n1ore than a handful of soldiers, no air force, and no tanks of any kind. On
the other hand, the 1nilitaiy depots of other countries, beginning with
France, were cranuned with weapons of terrible power. They alone, if
seized by tl1e desire for donlination, could endanger international secu-
rity. That had been clearly seen when in 1923, in opposition to the wishes
of the English, Poincare had launched his divisions into the Ruhr. If Ger-
many had reacted to that invasion, instead of subsiding into passive re-
sist.ance, Europe nligl1t have seen war and bloodshed a second time. The
proble1n of international security in 1932 tilus in no way hinged on any ex-
cessive military force of the Germans, but solely on tl1e annaments of tile
principal allies, the only ones sitting on thousands of heavy cannon and
assault tanks.
The 1nan of all work for the French after 1918, in fact their principal
agent in Central Europe-and an agent of the Soviets as well-the
Czechoslovak, Edouard Benes, set to work to wear down the Americans,
who were such pests. While giving the appearance of rapturously accept-
ing Mr. Hoover's 1narvelous plan, the Czech took great pains to render it
nonsense as quickly as possible. In tile resolution wllich he sublnitted to
a vote of the asse1nbly, tile proposal to reduce land forces, battleships
and subn1arines by a third; cruisers, destroyers and aircraft earners by a

fourth; and to ellininate tanks, heavy artillery and bombers altogether,
was reduced by Benes to tl1e very vague proposal of a "substantial reduc-
tion" tl1at would have to be implemented "by a general convention."
When, where and how, God alone knew. The proposal was no longer a de-
cision to be made, as requested by Mr. Hoover, but "a goal to attain.... "
A goal which, according to the text itself, was completely problemat-
ical. It was furtl1er specified in an "appended statement" that this re-
sponse of the conference, obscure and dilatory as it was, was not binding
in any way and was considered "without prajudice to any later position
of tl1e conference." In short, they agreed to nothing and proposed notlling,
and even that nothing could still be annulled by any "later position" taken
by the conference.
The Soviet delegate, M. Litvinov, on July 21, 1932, had these splendidly
cynical comments to offer: "Although the resolution begins by affirnling
that the hour has come for all nations t.o adopt substantial and far-reach-
ing measures with an eye to disarmament and the consolidation of world
peace, what follows in the text is the absolut.e negation of that affinnation.
It seems, on the contrarY, to constitute a recognition of the fact tl1at the
stat.es represented at the conference did not consider the time had come
to adopt a single decisive measure with an eye to disarmament." (State-
ment of M. Litvinov, July 21, 1932.) "The effort has been in vain," declared
the Italian delegate on that same July 21, 1932. "In any case it has been ab-
solutely inadequate by comparison with the wishes and hopes of tlle
world."
The American, Gibbons, found it deplorable. It remained for tl1e Ger-
man delegate, Nadolny, to draw tlle conclusion of this modem comedy:
"For months the peoples of the world have followed the odd spectacle of
these labors with great astonishment. They have seen a multitude of pro--
posals, suggestions and complicated discussions pass before them with-
out perceiving the slight.est tangible result Under these circumstances,
we find it impossible to accept the resolution submitted t.o us."
Gennany consequently made known her decision to the assembly.
"My government," Nadolny solemnly declared, "must point out that fron1
this day on it cannot pledge its continued collaboration unless a satisfac-
tocy solution of tl1is matter, decisive for Gennany, is reached before tl1e
work of the conference is resumed."
There it was. Either the 61 other countries would put an end to their
intemtinable obstructionism, or Germany, the eternal "second-rate na-

tion," would not return to Geneva Their bags packed, the Gennans left
for the Berlin train. The others looked at each other and smiled. Those
dull-witted Teutons wouldn't be any firmer than before. Their ill humor
would melt away during the swnmer like sugar.
Why worry about it? Joyously as always, witl1 wives and pseudo-wives
tucked into the limousines, they scattered for their summer vacations.
The sky nevertheless was no longer cloudless. In the east, Gennany no
longer looked willing to bear whatever she was given. Adolf Hitler was
shaking up the succes.5ive governments of the Reich, all specialists in ca-
pitulation, with a vigor that was increasing by the day. And by the swnn1er
of 1932, those governments were starting to be fearful. Was this young
Adolf Hitler really going to sweep them away like so much vennin? On the
l0tl1 of the preceding April, facing Marshal Hindenbmg, tl1e toughest pos-
sible opponent, he had gained 2 nlillion new votes. With his 13,418,051
votes, he already represented 36.8 percent of the German electorate. On
tl1e very eve of Benes's trick proposal, Hitler had won 230 deputy seats in
the legislative elections despite n1ultiple acts of sabotage by the old
regilne, that now had its back to the wall.
The National Socialist Party had become by far the most important
party in the Reich-larger than the socialist and Communist parties com-
bined-and four times as strong as the Centrwn that had fonnerly been
so powerful. It was quite apparent tl1at the minister of foreign affairs,
Baron von Neurath, had no desire to be carried away by a cyclone. He
was already beginning to think that some day in the near future he nlight
just find hinlSelf beconling one of Hitler's nlinisters (six montllS later it
would be so). The doormat years were over. On Aug. 8, 1932, the m.ittister
of the Reichswehr had declared categorically to The New Y01x Times: "It
is itnperative for Ge1many that it be stated specifically and precisely by
the Allies that the Disarmrunent Convention will apply to her as to the
others."
On Aug. 29, 1932, Minister von Neurath sent the French goven1ment
a second 1nessage that was equally unequivocal: "Germany asks for equal
military rights, that is, the right to decide for herself the constitution of the
ariny it needs to assure its security. To act otl1erwise would be to remain
in the position of a subordinate nation. Gennru1y is prepared to give up
any weapons that the otl1er powers will also give up."
It was necessary to put an end to this procrastination. Eitl1er Gennm1y
would be acknowledged to have "equal rights" once and for all, or Ger-
nuulY would definitely end its participation in such a Molieresque assem-
bly. Every country was to consider it settled.
The French did not let the pretensions of those insufferable Ger-
n1ai1S trouble tl1eir vacations in the least. On Sept. 11, 1932, Paris gave
notice of its categorical refusal. It considered Article VIII of the pact as
tl1e basis for its position-while being detennined not to rely on it. Said
article "specified that maintenance of the peace demanded the reduc-
tion of annaments." The French official statement did not risk going be-
yond that affinnation. The note from Paris sweetly added that the whole
question remained subject to Article 164 of the Treaty of Versailles,
which stipulated tl1at "Gennany declares herself committed henceforth,
for the period during which she will be a member of the League of Na-
tions, not to exceed the annaments stipulated in the appended tables."
The argument was in complete bad faith. Since 1927 a disanned Ger-
many had vainly awaited the quid pro quo. Once her disannament had
been officially recognized-which had been done-the Allies were ob-
ligated to disann equally. It was a fonnal agreement, which they had
signed over 11 years before.
But France was resolved never to recognize it. Quite to the contrary,
since 1927 she had been pushing the construction and heavy annament
of tlle Maginot Line along the border with Gern1any, which had no mili-
tary. Paris knew perfectly well that her position was juridically indefen-
sible. "French diplomacy faltered, caught in a net of contradictions that
rendered her argumentation daily more feeble." (Benoist-Medlin, 01). cU.,
vol. II, p. 135.)
Three months after the twisted reply of the French government, von
Neurath took up his pen again and this time addressed the chainnan of
tlle Disannament Conference, Mr. Henderson. The warning of July was
taking on a radical character: "Gennany will not be able to take its place
at the Conference again as long as the question of equal rights has not
been resolved." On Sept 28, 1932, tlle reopening of the session took place.
Gennany's seat was vacant
The reporter for L'Europe Nouvelle, in the issue of Oct 11, 1932, writes
that the mood is ominous "under a gloomy sky and in an atmosphere
more lusterless and more bleak than the autumn sky or the waters of the
lake." The delegations look each other over. Most of the delegates obseive
a distrustful silence, or converse in a low voice as though they were in the
p~geways of a clinic. "It is because a death is taking place behind the

doors of the palace on Quai Wtlson: It is the Disarmament Conference
dying, and the odor of its decomposition is poisoning the air." (Benoist-
Mechin, op. cit., vol. m, p. 136.) Will the moribund conference end up at
the morgue this fall?
TI1e British were terrified by this odor of death. They exerted pres-
sures on the French, which they hoped would be a constraint
At last France appeared to yield. But the concession would once
again be ensnared in the non-disclosures, which nullified it The official
communique of the assembly, dated Dec.11, 1932, stipulated that "one
of the principles which should sezve as a guide for the Disarmament
Conference should be the granting of equal rights to Germany, as to
other powers disarmed by the treaty." Theoretically, then, it was done.
Equal rights were proclaimed, but the same declaration immediately
drowned them in a cascade of restrictions. First, the equality would not
be a fact, but a "guide." Next, it would be valid only "under a system
that would allow security for all nations." It would suffice then to state
that the said security did not seem sufficiently assured to topple the fa-
mous rights just now confirmed from their platform. A second land
mine planted beneath those "rights."
"This declaration implies that the respective annament limitations of
all the states ought to be inscribed in the planned Disarmament Conven-
tion." It does not say "were to be," but "ought to be." The inscribing thus
remains problematical. Moreover, the convention is "planned," not set-
tled. Nor accepted. Only "planned." Nothing at all is promised. It "will be
planned." A third 1nine: "It is clearly understood that the method of apply-
ing said equality of rights remains to be discussed at the Conference."
More discussions? How much more time would be wasted? And just how
would it end?
It was a punctured buoy that the masked deliverers had just thrown
into the sea It would sink before Germany got to it While the delegates
had gone home to eajoy their yule logs, they still had no inkling in Geneva
that the following month a strong 1nan would come to power in Germany,
a man they would not be able to trifle with forever.
They had seen his picture in the newsreels, his abrupt gestlll'es, his
little mustache. What they didn't yet know about were his teeth.
The infamous railway car from Compiegne. It was here that the surrender of Germany
that ended World War I was signed, and the infamous Versailles Treaty-designed to
bankrupt the German state forever-was also signed. The armistice was imposed by
Ferdinand Foch, second from the right, a French field marshal and favorite of British
capitalists, who was also made a marshal in the armies of Britain and the British-im-
posed government of Poland. At<G PHOTOSINEWSCOM
CHAPTER
BURIAL AT THE LEAGUE OF NATIONS
ven if the British were beginning to get their backs up in

Geneva, and still more in London, it was all too evident that
Paris would not give up either her artillery or her tanks. Just
when it was believed that the last arguments against disar-
man1ent had been exhausted, the French delegates cun-
ningly and deftly tossed a new banana peel into the Geneva assembly hall
for the delegates to slip on. While ma.l<ing a show, with much amiability,
of accepting an armainent reduction in principle, they made two de-
mands, at least one of which-converting inspections into a trap-they
knew perfectly well Gennany would find totally unacceptable. "Inspec-
tions" (and tltls was the cunning part) would have to be carried out for a
certain te1m constituting a "trial period."
If the inspections did not yield satisfactory results, the first stage of
disannan1ent would be deferred until the trial period was at an end. And
only after tl1at would the question of "equal rights" again be considered.
The con1edy, the eten1a.l Geneva comedy, was starting all over again:
furtive, refined, tirele~. The actress crune back on the stage each time
,vith a new panto1nilne act, but always in the same old costume of
hypocrisy. When the s1niling French delegates had been asked how long
this "trial period" would last, they had bluntly replied: five years, or even
seven years.
It was lunacy. There had long since been nothing further to inspect in
Gennany, since her disannrunent had been completed and officially ac-
kno,vledged as con1plete in 1927 by the Allied co1nmis.sion headed by a

Frenchman. But it was Gennany that had to be supervised all over again
for the five years or seven years of a "trial period. 11 That meant creating a
second "Allied Control Conunission," since the first one, with its mission
accomplished, had dissolved seven years before. As for the victors of
1918, on tlte otlter hand, no verification would be necessary, since admit-
tedly tltey would automatically keep all tlteir weapons during the trial pe-
riod preceding any eventual disarmament
It was only thereafter tl1at one "would consider. 11 To complete the hu-
miliation of tlte Gennans, who were treated in advance as suspects and
cheaters, France called for sanctions to be est.ablished which would not
affect them, but only tlte Gennans, the only ones undergoing inspection.
They recalled the sanctions of the Versailles Treaty which in just three
years had cost the Reich tltree punitive invasions by the French. Ten
years after the Ruhr, France still aspired to resurrect those arbitrary
methods of repression. "Do you want to go back 10 years, then?11 Baron
Aloisi, tlte Italian delegate, hurled back at his colleagues. "Ideas like
those are inapplicable and out.dated. How can you want to impose meth-
ods on Gennany today that have already failed?11 (Popow d'lt,al,ia, Sept
15, 1933.)
In a conservative country like Belgium, which is neighbor to both
Gennany and France, the government weighed the situation no less
clearly than the English and the Italians. The prenlier of Belgium, Comte
Charles de Broqueville, speaking before tlte Belgian Senate on March 6,
1934, declared: "The Treaty of Versailles is the consequence of a grand
illusion, an illusion perpetrated by the men who drafted the treaty with-
out sufficiently taking into account the teachings of history.... We must
have the courage to face reality. In this domain, dreams don't lead to
anything except catastrophes. What is it about? It is not simply a ques-
tion of knowing whether or not we shall tolerate the reannarnent of Ger-
rnanY, but whether we shall avoid an annarnents race that will inevit.ably
lead to war." For the Germans on the one hand to submit for five or seven
more years to unilateral inspection, and the French and their allies on tlte
otlter hand to ret.ain maximum rnilit.ary power: that was postponing im-
plementation of the "recognition of rights11 (which had been promised in
1919 at Versailles, tlten accepted definitively on Dec. 11, 1932) to the
Greek calends.
To come back to that was to repudiate for the umpteenth time a
BURIAL AT THE LEAGUE OF NATIONS I 329
sole1nn inte1national co1runittnent. In that case, Gennany would have no

chance at all of seeing the European balance of power reestablished dur-
ing the years to come. Meanwhile, there could well be increased danger
of Gennany's encirclement, since the million or so Soviet soldiers-a fig-
ure capable of being quintupled-might be called to join the French and
wring the neck of the new Reich. It wasn't an idle fear.
It was well lmown in the embassies tl1at France was already seeking
to get together with the USSR, as in the time of the czars before World
War I, in order to lay the foundations of a Franco-Soviet pact-a pact
which was indeed concluded and signed less than two years later, in 1935.
Seeing that the sabotage was going to go on indefinitely and that there
no longer existed any serious chance of turning the West into a zone of
peace, Hitler, in the nonnal course of events, oughtsin1ply to have slammed
the door. He nonetheless n1ade one last gesture: he sent Dr. Goebbels, his
most dynan1ic and n1ost intelligent collaborator, to Geneva Goebbels had
no sooner descended fro1n the plane tl1an the French press tore into him.
He was described as "a dark, nusshapen little n1an." "His ascetic face was
cruel looking." "He was surrounded by a dozen bodyguards in his automo-
bile." A re1narkable auto1nobile. It could seat a dozen bodyguards, not to
n1ention the chauffeur and the secretaries of tl1at ugly little man.
Goebbels was courteous to tl1e point of inviting the crowd ofjournal-
ists, a considerable nmnber of whom were Jews, t;o a press conference.
He invited even the n1ost relentless of the French repo1ters to come to
Gennany: "You'll be able to visit one of the concentration camps whose
brutality you denounce so eloquently and see for yourselves." Needless
t.o say, none of the valiant waniors of the pen would venture that easy ver-
ification which nlight not have coincided with tl1e baloney their newspa-
pers had for months worked so hard to disseminate. With the
Disarmainent Conference still at an impasse, at the last nlinute, Baron
Aloisi and his colleague, Mr. Souvitch, the representatives of Italy-which
was then on tl1e best of tenns witl1 its fonner French and English allies-
offered a te1nperate solution.
"The two Italian delegates," Benoist-Mechin writes, "suggested a com-
promise fonnula: the heavily anned powers would iminediately cany out
the first stage of the disannainent inscribed in the French progrrun. Then
an international commission would be appointed which would simulta-
neously verify the level of German annaments and the results achieved
in tl1e otl1er countries. All the powers being tJ1us subject to fixed funita-
tions, tlte verification would lose its vexatious character which rendered
it unacceptable to Gennany." (Op. cit., vol. ill, 145.) It was all in vain. The
siege was laid. The conference refused categorically to allow the Italian
note to be submitted for examination, much less for discussion.
'l\vo days later tile Gennan minister of foreign affairs, Baron von Neu-
ratl1, atte1npted tl1e impossible: going to see the French minister, Paul-
Boncour, personally. The latter's response came like the crack of a whip:
"It is absolutely essential to institute automatic and permanent interna-
tional disannament verification. This verification must first go through a
trial period." It always came back to the same means of evasion. Unilat-
eral inspection for five or seven years. Only after that would they "con-
sider" whether or not Gennaey, hat in hand, could be granted "by stages"
alnis of one sort or another.
Under those conditions, what was the use of still negotiating with peo-
ple who were detennined not to negotiate, resolved instead on keeping
Gennany under their thumb for years, at the end of which time there
would be only further questions-and suspensions. At the Hitler Youth
Congress on Sept 16, 1933, the Reich minister of the interior, Wilhelm
Frick, carefully weighing his words, had issued a final warning: "If an at-
tempt is made to maintain the Gennan people in the role of a pariah and
to persist in denying Germany equal rights, it should cause no astonish-
ment if Germany refuses to play this game any longer and withdraws
from all international conventions." Another 10 days of waiting passed,
during which time a simple conciliatory gesture might perhaps have
avoided the rupture which had now become imminent. But on the French
side, no one said a word.
It only remained then for von Neurath to communicate to Mr. Hen-
derson, on Oct 6, 1933, the decision of his government, announcing that,
having found it impossible to achieve an agreement of any kind, Gennany
no longer had any alternative but to provide on her own in future for the
rebuilding of her anned forces, without however exceeding the nonns
that the other countries maintained or established to their own advan-
tage. The foreign minister's note specifically stated: "Germany categori-
cally rejects the 'trial period'; she agrees to transform the Reichswehr
into an anny fonned of contingents recruited for short-tenn enlistments,
following the principle inscribed in the MacDonald Plan. She claims the
right to rearm as soon as the first stage of disannament has been reached
by the other powers. She intends to have all anns that other countries
BURIAL AT THE LEAGUE OF NATIONS I 331
are authorized to possess, the quantity of such arms alone being subject
to any discussion." In spite of everything, since Gennany was not asking
for anything more than the others were allowed, the door was still slightly
ajar. The conference board hastened to close it. It made lmown t.o the
German delegate on Oct 12 that its decisions would be unilaterally im-
posed and integrally maintained. It added that they were irrevocable: the
government of the Reich had to reply t.o this communication either by a
yes or by a no.
Everyone at Geneva was sure that Hitler, driven t.o the wall, would
say yes. It was no. 'l\vo days later, on Oct. 14, 1933, the conference board
would receive a telegram from Hitler that was short and to the point:
"Germany withdraws from both the Disarmament Conference and the
League of Nations." That same evening Hitler addressed all the people of
Germany by radio:
It has been said the people and the government of Germany

have asked for an anns increase. That is absolutely untrue. We
have asked only for equal rights. If the world decides to destroy
all weapons down t.o the last machine gun, we are ready t.o accept
such an agreement. If the world decides that certain weapons are
to be destroyed, we are ready to renounce them in advance. But
if the world grants every nation certain weapons, we are not dis-
posed t.o let ourselves be debarred from their use as a second-
class nation.
We are ready to take part in any conferences. We are ready to
subscribe to any conventions, but only on the condition of having
equal rights.... The German people have no less pride tl1an I. Ei-
ther we shall have equal rights, or the world will no longer see us
at any conference.
Faithful to his convictions, Hitler that same evening called on all the
people to decide by universal suffrage: "A plebiscite will be arranged so
that every Gennan citizen may say whether I am right, or if he disap-
proves."
"At last," exclaimed old Marshal von Hindenburg, t.o whom the years
of negotiation at Geneva had brought nothing but bitterness and gall, "we
have a man who has the courage to do something." On the other side of
the English Channei Lloyd George, the elder statesman of English politics
and one of tl1e 1nen chiefly responsible for the 'Ii·eaty of Versailles, was as
finll as tl1e president of tl1e Reich in his disapproval: "Gen11any has right
on her side. How long do you tl1ink England would stand for that kind of
llllllliliatio11?"
Hitler's telegrrun had fallen like a bo1nb runong the Geneva trouble-
1nakers responsible for the ulti1natu1n of Oct. 12. "There is no doubt,"
Benoist-Mechin reported, "that Hitler had declared on 1nore thru1 one oc-
casion tl1at he would quit tl1e conference if appropriate action were not
taken concenling llis denlallds, but no one had taken tl1at tlu:eat seriously.
'They'll never dare,' tl1e delegates said to each other. Now, the plenipoten-
tiaries are helpless; t11ey 1neet in the corridors ru1d nervously wonder
what tl1e future will bring." Stilnson at ffrst had treated the Gennan del-
egate as a "1nad dog." Henderson, the chainnan of the conference, no
longer knowing whom to blan1e, found fault with t11e head of his own
govenm1ent: "MacDonald doesn't want to work at a disannament con-
ference witl1out Gennany; in the circumstances, my govenunent assumes
a heavy responsibilitY, because nothing will be done."
"We've lost tl1e gaine," lacorucally munnured French Premier Paul-
Boncour. TI1e mru1 most dismayed was Minister Politis, a Greek as cun-
ning as Ulys.ses and tl1e sharpest of tl1e ctiplo1nats at Geneva He delivered
what was almost a funeral oration: "Disarlnainent is dead. For it to have
succeeded, tl1e great democracies would have to have been headed by
stable govenunents that were preoccupied not with tl1eir inten1al cliffi-
culties, but with tl1e requirements of Europe and the world. Now, God
knows where we are going." (Genevieve Tabouis, Cassandra, p. 174f.)
Where were tl1ey going? TI1ey were attending a dazzling Hitlerian vic-
tory that they had done everything to bring about, by rejectillg the Reich
as they would have a dead allin1al. They had thought to discredit and
overthrow Hitler by a hunliliating refusal, and they had thrown nilllions
of Gennans not yet won over to Hitler right into his anns. The GennallS
were unanimous in tl1eir judgment of tl1e events of Geneva The Marxists
who baited a11d heckled Hitler's supporters a year earlier now hunied to
his n1eetings to acclaim lilin.
"We refuse to take part in discussions," Hitler hurled llis words at tl1e
crowd "If we're treated there like bootblacks, like inferior beings; if tl1e
rest of tJ1e world entrenches itself in impregnable strongholds [and)
builds in1mense air squadrons and enonnous aitillery pieces, it has no
right to speak of a threat under tl1e pretext tl1at tl1e National Socialists,
BURIAL AT THE LEAGUE OF NATIONS I. 333
who have no weapons at all, march in columns four abreast to provide a

visible model for the community of the Gennan people." At the Berlin
Sports Palace, januned to the rafters and with an enonnous crowd
n1assed outside, Hitler cried, "We want peace, and we want an agreement,
but we also want our honor and our rights. I say that I would rather die
than sign a document which I am convinced would not be acceptable for
the Gennan people."
Even the most stubborn of the dignitaries of the churches now rallied
around Hitler. The most "umbrageous" one among tl1em, Pastor Martin
Niemoeller, always the leader of any opposition, telegraphed Hitler: "We
hail our Fuelu-er in this decisive hour for our people and our fatherland.
We thank him for his manly action and enlightening words in defense of
Gennany's honor. In the name of more than twenty-five thousand evan-
gelical ministers, we take an oath of fidelity to him and 3$UI'e him of our
constant prayers." The evangelical bishops, coming away from an inter-
view witl1 Hitler, were equally eloquent:
Still under the impression of the grand hour that the leadeis
of the Gennan Evangelical Church have just passed with the
Chancellor of the Reich, they confinn with a single heart their un-
conditional fidelity to the Third Reich and its Fuehrer. (Schacht,
Memoires d'un magicien, vol. II, 28.)
Leaping on tl1e opportunity offered hi.tn by the fanatic schemers of
Geneva, Hitler, with his lightning sense of action, had at once organized
the plebiscite, and that, seizing the imagination of the public, was going
to win hhn ntillions of new supporters. "For the first tilue," acknowledged
the fan1ous and flashy Parisian journalist, Genevieve Tabouis, one of the
most rabid anti-Hitlelites, "Hitler revealed to the world his prodigious gift
of psychology, using the same tactics he would put to use later in the mil-
it:ary don1ain. By his quick action he plunged the enemy camp into disar-
ray, thus rendering them incapable of using the superior forces they had
at their disposal. It was Genuany's first great diplomatic victory since the
war." (G. Tabouis, op. cit., 175.) Far more than just a diplomatic victory,
it was going to be tl1e victory of a nation all of the same mind. Hitler had
been given the bridge over which the Gennans of all classes and creeds
would pass and join his ranks.
Geneva had done more for hhn tl1an a tllousand Goebbels rallies.
It is certain tl1at no one in tl1e world ever had Hitler's genius for cap-
tivating and winning people over. For stirring them. In tl1e grandeur of
tl\e in,ages he evoked that inevitably exalted one's imagination and
gripped one's heart. Throughout that week following Geneva, Hitler had
not only gone out n1aldng speeches to people from factory to factory; he
had appeared everywhere. The airplane had become his flying car. He
spoke at 10 o'clock in tl1e morning at Dresden. In the afternoon he put in
an appearance at Hamburg. In the evening he was stirring up the crowds
at Koenig.5berg. The whole Reich was vibrating with emotion. "A wave of
in1Inense procE!$ions," Joaquirn Fest relates, "of ceremonies, of protests,
and of appeals to tlle masses broke over Germany. Hundreds of thou-
sands of posters proclaimed: we want recognition of our honor and our
rights. War invalids thronged into the streets in their wheelchairs, bran-
dishing placards: 'Germany's dead ask you for your vote.'"
Even silence was called on for aid. Hitler, a born Wagnerian, naturally
made use of pathos in swaying the crowd. In order to get the entire nation
feeling the same emotion, on the last day of the week, he asked the entire
population to stop and observe silence for two minutes no matter where
tlley were, at work, in the street, at school, even in trains, which were
also to stop: and 67 million Germans were thus frozen in their tracks
wherever the national wat.chword surprised tl1em. The radio stations, too,
had interrupted their transmission after having called on their listeners
for meditation. Afterward tlle bells all over Germany sounded in unison.
PsychologicallY, the effect was indescribable. "It was something I had to
do on the last day," Hitler exclaimed "It was absolutely essential to strike
one great blow, to make a gesture tllat everyone could understand, a lib-
erating act I had to snatch the Gennan people from the links of the strong
net that confined them, a net of dependence, of empty phrases and false
ideas, and give us back our freedom of action. It's no longer a matter here,
for me, of day to day politics. Never mind if our difficulties have become
greater for the moment"
Hitler continued: "What was called for without fail was an act tl1at
would stir up entllusiasm, that would imbue the collective will with a
sense of the new day that had come. Acts are the only thing understood
by the people, not sterile negotiations that never lead anywhere."
Gennany voted on Nov. 12, 1933. It was a double vote: the Germans
had to elect a new Reichstag; and on a second ballot slip, they had to in-
dicat.e whether or not they were in agreement with Hitler, approved of
and were satisfied with his social policies, and above all whether, in the
llURIAL ATTIIE LEAGUE OF NATIONS 335
Having just been named Reich Chancellor, Hitler appeared at the window of the Chan-
cellery on Wilhelmstrasse in Berlin on Jan. 30, 1933, at the demand of the throngs of
people who had appeared to celebrate the victory of National Socialism.
FEOERAl GERMAN ARCHIVE 146•1972-026-11
face of the intolerance offoreign powers, they suppo1tecl hhn in full faitl1.
It ,vas an incredible tlimnph for Hitler, a royal gift of the Geneva 1nanip-
ulators. In less than a year, Hitler had doubled his suppo1t: fro1n
17,300,000 votes in l\1arch of 1933 to 40,632,628, representing 95 percent
of the votes cast by the Ge1111ru1 people. It was a free election, rigorously
so, caniecl out under U1e inquisitive eyes of a hundred special observers
front tl1e foreign press who searched everywhere for any indication of
pressure or local falsifying of retunlS.
Anyone could easily have voted against Hitler, as is proven by the
fact that nearly 3 1nillion Gennruts did so: 40,632,628 yes votes out of a
total of 43,493,575 voters 1neru1t that 2,860,947 Germru1 citizens had not
approved of the Fuehrer. Seven percent of the Gennans had n1arkecl
their disagree1nent; 50% or 1nore could just as easily have done so. The
possibility of opposition was further clearly shown by the fact tl1at the
list of National Socialist deputies had received only 30 ntillion votes
from the 45 1nillion voters, instead of the 40,632,628 votes obtained by
Hitler hintSelf.
No political figure in any country in Europe had ever been able to

reap such a harvest of votes. When a French or British politician, or
even an American president, obtains 52 percent or 53 percent of the
votes cast, he struts like a peacock. Democratically speaking, this un-
trammeled expression of universal suffrage had made Corporal Hitler,
eyed suspiciously 10 months before, the most powerful head of govem-
nient in Europe. Even ex-Chancellor von Papen, who had been charged
by von Hindenburg with keeping an eye on the semi-prisoner, glorified
"the genius of the chancellor."
The most interesting testimony had been that of the ambassador of
Great Britain, who, from his post at the embassy in Berlin, had followed
everything and seen everything-the rebellion of the German people, the
absolutely free running of the elections, the indisputable triumph of
Hitler. A realist, the amb~or didn't quibble. "One thing is certain," he
wrote to his government;: "Mr. Hitler's position is unassailable. Even in
those circles that do not approve of National Socialism in the least, he
has increased his prestige by the elections.'' He declared Hitler to be in the
right, stating:
"That tlle Fuehrer lost his calm in this matter is not to be wondered at
In effect, we tried to put him in the position of being 'guillotined by per-
suasion.'" (Fest, Hitler, vol. II, 72.) There was nothing for it but to send
the guillotine back to Geneva, to the warehouse for useless accessories.
The lesson had been a striking one. But had anyone outside the Reich un-
derstood it?
CHAPTER
ADOLF HITLER'S STRATEGY
t was apparent that if Hitler were someday to undertake the inva-

sion of Russian space, he wouldn't be able to oust Stalin (and
Lenin's mummy) from the Kremlin with a few old generals wearing
monocles and a hundred thousand over-age soldiers. However, in
avoiding the compromise he had been offered in Geneva of a partial
and unsatisfactory agreement, he had also been given the perfect excuse
to get started on his own rearmament program, a program aimed not in
the least at a confrontation with the western nations, but which would ul-
timately make possible the large-scale scale military operations he in-
tended to employ one day in opening a path for his people to the lands of
the east before Stalin invaded Europe.
His acceptance of minimal proposals such as those of Hoover and
MacDonald was simply an adroit testimony of the wish for peace that he
desired to make manifest to the French, the British and the other Western
countries.
He himself had affirmed from the beginning that it would be impera-
tive to avoid foreign policy problems for several years.
A large modern army is not put together on the spur of the moment:
not in the raising of tens of divisions and their cadres of command, nor
in the enonnous amount of war materiel required.
Since 1919, the handful of soldiers quartered in the Reich had been
compelled to use cars and carts covered over with cardboard in place of
tanks. Notasingle airplane either. In order to build 2,000 or3,000 of them,
~t\8 I HITLER DEMOCRAT
to fonn and tntin their crews, and to devise 1noden1 co1nbat tactics, a
long peliod of peace was necessary. Hitler tllerefore had eve1y interest in
waiting, in gaining tilne.
He also told himself tllat tile "ancient and glolious adversaries" would
ultin,ately understand tllat tlle Conunwlist danger was lying in wait for all
of tllen1, the French as well as the Genuans, and that Hitler, in taking the
enonnous risk of a war against tile USSR, would free then1 of tl1at threat
as well as his own co1npatriots in the event that he should succeed. And
in case Hitler should fail, they could coolly rub their hands togetl1er at
tJ1e prospect of a Gennany very much weakened and at their n1ercy.
Hitler's war against the Soviets could thus be of great advantage to Paris
and London. Hitler could co1ue out of it greatly strengtl1ened, and Ger-
n1ru1y increased in size.
h1 any case, however well the matter should turn out for him, it would
take 50 or 100 years-spent in putting things in order, creating new set-
tle1nents, in getting s01ne yield fron1 the new lands-before the Gem1any
of Hitler, or post-Hitler, would have an effective force in hand. A lot of
tJlings nlight chru1ge before tl1en. France would no doubt have under-
stood in tilne that a close collaboration with a strong Gennany on a 50-
50 basis could assure the two great countries thus reconciled a decisive
preenlinence in tlle West Would that be to England's taste?
Undoubtedly not For it had been her preoccupation for 500 years to
prevent continental Europe from beconling strong. But the thought of
having t11e Soviets spread like the pox had also haw1ted the Blitish e1npire
since 1918. Allowing Hitler to set up a barrier to the east and reduce the
power of the Soviets was certainly less painful.
Faced witl1 tllis prospect, Blitish opinion could change and tl1e leaders
of the British Empire weigh and consider. The most iJnpo11.ant English
newspapers proved conciliatory. The most clearheaded Blitisher, tl1e
prince of Wales a11d heir apparent to tl1e tlrrone, appreciated Hitler's ac-
tions a11d proudly affinned tllat it would fulfill his greatest runbition one
day to effect tl1e reconciliation of tl1e British and Gennru1 peoples. A ntun-
ber of English war veterans visited Hitler and fratenlized witl1 tl1eir con1-
rades of the Reich.
The two countries had the same origin, the srune blood. The day
would perhaps arlive when, mstead of teruing each other to pieces, tl1ey
would at last notjust understalld each otl1er but n1ake a teain, sharing in-
terests that were not nee~ opposed. That drerun nlight beco1ne a re-
ADOLF HITLER'S STRATEGY I 339
ality, with the one nation taking in hand tl1e protection and organization
of t11e European continent, the other representing the white world on the
seven seas and 1narldng tl1e print of 500 million human being.5 throughout
tl1e world. For quite son1e time British public opinion would be rather in
favor of a policy of understanding with Gennany. It was only a very small
minority of provocateurs like Churchill who, in 1939, would tum thing.5
around and blow up the works.
Relieved of the dead weight of the Disannament Conference wherein
the futile debate ran on intemlinably about a disannament that France
would never have accepted, Hitler, on the evening of Dec. 12, 1933, sup-
po1ted by the confidence placed in him by 95 percent of the voters of his
country, had recovered his freedom of action in the military sphere as in
otl1ers as well. Henceforth he could give all his attention to his essential
political plans. He was in no hurry. If only from self-interest, he would
have preferred to arrange for a period of peace in the West and establish
a basis for useful collaboration before preparing his definite march to-
ward tl1e east.
He lo1ew he would be able to rebuild a strong army in Germany only
one step at a tilne, division by division, squadron by squadron, t:ank col-
unm by tank colun1n. He had always had his doubts whether Gennany
would be obliged to waste tilne in useless and deadly fights over a hill in
Oise or a pasture on the Moselle. Their own interests as well ought to
have led his foreign opponents to pacification. If, instead of getting rough
with Hitler, tl1ey had had a grain of political intelligence, they would not
have wasted years in provoking stupid and endless bickering. They would
have 1uade a few reasonable and carefully calculated concessions to
Hitler, while placating hiln by tossing him a few bones. All thing.5 consid-
ered, Hitler should perhaps have been glad to see that the French were
detennined to re1uain intractable. Once over tl1e break, he could have
available for the n1ove eastward not just a hundred thousand soldiers,
but a 1nillion, or even several nlillion, if it suited hiin.
Despite that he did not fail to play the grune of collaboration. His con-
duct was irreproachable: he was patient to a fault, constantly finding him-
self in a nest of vipers, yet for a year and a half renewing his proposals
with a n1oderation astonishing in a man rather peppery by nature. Be-
sides, his policy of appease1nent had been very carefully thought out Ei-
ther it would prove fnlitful, in which case equal rights would be worth the
appease1nent of the West-and collaboration perhaps of mutual advan-
tage?-while in tl1e meantime he would then be able to prepare method-

ically for a decisive confrontation witl1 the Communists.
Or tl1e negotiations would prove to be just deceitful jabber, in which
case he would regain complete freedom of action. Hitler let prudence
guide him in all his arrangements. As long as he was in the stage of nego-
tiations, he had stuck to the Reichswehr stipulated by Versailles with
hardly any increase. Though not wishing to rearm precipitously, he had
nonetheles.5 taken care to be ready in case the general disannament in the
West should fall through. His preparations had been of a technical and
n1aterial nature. Since aircraft and tanks were totally banned for Ger-
numy, he had insistently egged on his scientists and manufacturers to pre-
pare the most modern and perfect prototypes possible. They would
enable him to reann both effectively and rapidly from the moment failure
at Geneva was an established fact
If patents and inventions were not going to be waiting around in pi-
geonholes at the moment of truth, it was imperative that the Reich have
the raw materials required for rebuilding the military, and at the time they
were almost totally lacking. There, too, Hitler had almost immediately,
but quietly, sent his buyers on the lookout in all the foreign markets, so
that if he were driven to reann, he would not be caught unprepared. He
would not shrink from using the total yield-or more-from Germany's
exports for these indispensable purchases.
Thus, excess imports of iron ore, only 3,431,400 tons in 1932, were
going to jump to 4,527,600 tons in 1934. The same for scrap iron: less tl1an
94,000 tons in 1932; more than 161,200 in 1933; more than 404,200 in 1934.
An even more detennined effort was made to procure the metals neces-
sacy in the making of high carbon steel. The chromium ore surplus of
47,500 tons in 1933 would go to 76,400 in the following year. Nickel ore
surplus: from 34,500 tons in 1933 to 37,600 in 1934. Metallic nickel: a sur-
plus of2,000 tons in 1933 and of 4,100 in 1934, or roughly double. Tung-
sten: 3,650 exces.5 tons in 1933 to 4,300 tons in 1934. As for bauxite, the
ore of aluminum and the ver:y basis of all modem aircraft construction,
the statistics had been pulverized: excess imports of bauxite, which had
been only 20,000 tons in 1932, had increased to 293,000 tons in 1933 and
reached 320,000 tons in 1934. A 16-fold increase. (General Debeney, Le
rearmement allemand, p. 29.)
Listing them all would become a chore. Cellulose, the raw material of
explosives had tripled: from 1,000,000 quintals a month in 1932 to
ADOLF IIITLEH'S STHATEGY I 311
View of one of the large halls of the Rheinmetall-Borsig AG armament factories at

Duesseldorf, Germany, where gun barrels were manufactured. Rheinmetall-Borsig
AG was a major German defense contractor which supported the efforts of Hitler to
rebuild the German nation by rearming the German military against aggression.
AP PHOTOINEWSCOM
3,242,024 quintals every month in tJ1e sununer of 1933. And similar ratios
for sulftuic acid, pyiit.es and coal tru: (A quintal is about 100 lbs.)
Everywhere, too, Hitler had ordered abandoned iron ntlnes put back
into operation, undertaken an intensive exploitation of oil wells, and
begtm tl1e large-scale production of the frunous ersatz, or substitute, prod-
ucts. By U1e end of December 1933, the I.G. Fru·ben compru1y-which
would ulthnately be manufacturing synthetic gasoline at the rate of
350,000 tons per year-had 134,700 workers instead of the 112,000 a few
n1ontl1S before. (Ikon Architnbaud, "Rapport sur le budget nlilitaire.") It
is surp1ising to discover t11is 0U1er aspect of Hitler's activity. He accon1-
plished these fantastic undertakings on top of all the rest \Ve tend to
Utlnk that his struggle against unemployinent-which he had cut in half
in 1933-had taken up all ltls ti.tne, but it was not so. He was a prodigy of
iinagination, of calculation, of preparation, and of realization. He used to
say, "I lrnow pelfectly what a 1nan cru1 do and what his llinits are."
He did not go too far, but he went very far. In a country wltlch, so to
speak, had no furtl,er financial p05.5ibilities in January of 1933, he had

been able, virtually in tl,e twinkling of an eye, to build up enormous
stocks of raw materials which would pennit him, should disannament
fail, to face up to anything-and witl1out delay.
In spite of tile disappointments suffered by his predecessors over the
years in Geneva, and despite the humiliations which he had been com-
pelled to swallow, Hitler had remained rather conciliatory for almost the
entire year of 1933. All things considered, the longer the others dragged
out tileir plots, tile more time they gave him to gather from around the
world tile raw materials which, from a military point of view, he gravely
lacked. If tl1e negotiations failed, he would not find himself in a technical
bind. They did fail, exactly as tile others had always intended. And as he
himself had foreseen. But when the fatal day arrived, Hitler had been able
to fill his warehouses while the windbags in Geneva realized nothing of
it The challenge could be hurled at him any time; he would have no dif-
ficulty taking it up.
Hitler's strategy would be one of envelopment. Strengthened by the
plebiscite of Nov. 12, 1933, and wishing to give the lie once again to those
who constantly represented him as a killjoy, Hitler was going to do his
best to bring tile peace negotiations he had begun with Poland some
months back to a conclusion. For tile Germans it would be like having to
swallow tile leg bone of an elephant But Hitler was sure of them. "For the
first time since the last days of the monarchy," Fest writes, "the majority
of the Gennans now had the feeling of being able to identify with the gov-
ernment without pity, anxiety, or fear." (Fest, op. cit., p. 76.) As recently
as April of 1933, Hitler had declared to the French ambassador that Ger-
many declined any responsibility for the eastern border. And now on Jan.
26, 1934, he announced the stunning news of an agreement between Ger-
many and the accursed Poles.
He hadjustconcluded a 10-year nonaggression pact with Poland: tl1e
striped poles marking the border tllat had been so contested by tile Ger-
mans since 1919 would stay planted where they were. Danzig, the Corri-
dor and Upper Silesia were recognized as Polish possessions or under
Polish control Four days later, Hitler came before the Reichstag to dis-
close and comment on "that convincing proof of his desire for an ent,ent,e
with even the most notorious of his adversaries": "The Germans and the
Poles must accept each otiler's existence." The Gennans managed to bear
the appeasement initiative with a good face.
ADOLF HITLER'S STRATEGY I 343
Among the peoples of Europe, the British were most impressed by

the unexpected agreement. For the second time, their ambassador in
Berlin, Sir Eric Phipps, took up his pen. He brought forth a new report to
his government that was as affirmative in tone as his commentary on the
plebiscite: "The Gennan chancellor proved he was a statesman by sacri-
ficing a portion of his popularity to the logic of his foreign policy."
("British Foreign Policy Documents," Jan. 30, 1934) A few weeks later
several British ministers turned up in Berlin full of congratulations. Eden,
tl1e dandy of the heartthrob magazines and a declared opponent of Na-
tional Socialism, found Hitler to be "self-possessed and friendly." That ar-
biter of London elegance even deigned t.o declare that Hitler was "almost
elegant," which was an exaggeration, since Hitler had no sartorial ambi-
tions, contenting him.self with carefully pressed trousers and a rural con-
stable type of jacket with two rows of butt.ons.
Tombler, the historian, recognized in Hitler "extraordinary qualities
of logic and clarity." Sir John Simon explained that Hitler was "a remark-
ably eloquent conversationalist." Hitler had been that without doubt, be-
cause his interest was to please the English and if possible to be able t.o
count on their partial understanding at the tilne of any new proposals.
That was immediately tl1e case. As it had to be considered an estab-
lished fact that the other countries would keep their armaments intact,
Hitler, free to act, offered to all of them to restrict his own to a moderate
level. The new army he proposed to raise would not exceed 300,000 men,
witl1 the foreign annies maintaining their established level. He was open
to any discussion concenling the offensive weapons that the others pos-
sessed. The English, as was foreseeable after their visit to Berlin, consid-
ered tl1at offer "perfectly acceptable as a basis of negotiations." For them
it was witl1out any great risk, because what was important to them was
their fleet And Hitler hadn't even alluded to that.
Moreover, he had said confidentially to Secretary Eden that he was
quite willing to maintain his air force at an inferior level with respect to
those of other countries: half tl1e air force of France or, alternatively, a
third that of all the Western air forces combined. Hitler left them the
choice: either the half or the third. He would agree in advance. Well,
300,000 men was not even a third of the troops of France and her satel-
lites. As for the aircraft, that would be less than 500 against 1,400. On the
other hand, there was no question at all concerning tl1e Soviets; Hitler
considered them relentless enemies.
344 I IIITLEH OEMOCHAT
The French, who tJ1ree 1uonths earlier had absolutely refused to rec-
ognize Ge1111any's right to have a single additional soldier, or a single
plane even on Gennan soil, could not but view the new plan with dis-
pleasure. But Hitler's skill in 1naneuvering had robbed tl1eir position of its
strength in advance by weakening tl1e hitherto constant suppo1t tl1at had
been given the1n by the British. For on the English side, the possibility of
Great Britain's being won over to the plan of partial disannrunent pron1-
ised by Hitler was clearly beginning to take shape. Historian Benoist-
1'1echin writes: "On Jan. 29 Englru1d directs a note to tl1e various powers
in which she reaffinns tl1e connection between the matter of secwity and
tl1at of disannan1ent But she recognizes that one can not confer certain
anus on certain countries while refusing them to others." (Op. cit., vol.
m, p. 149.) With respect to ground forces, England proposed quite sitnply
tJ1at they split the difference: "Witl1 respect to the nu1nber of German
troops, tJ1e government of the United Kingdo1n would be in favor of a fig-
ure halfway between the 200,000 men proposed by Mr. MacDonald ru1d
the 300,000 asked by Mr. Hitler." (Ibid.) London advised Paris to yield
partially on the proble1n of the tanks and to autl1orize a Geiman military
air force while setting up a delay period of two years: "Gennany would be
authorized to have assault tanks of less than six tons. As for tl1e air force,
tl1e plan envisions a delay of two years, dtuing which tune an effort will
be n1ade to elinlinate military aviation co1npletely. If tl1at attempt fails,
tl1e Reich will also have tl1e right within two years to build herself an air
fleet" (Ibid.) The Anglo-Gennan train was not yet under way, but tl1ey
were ready to hook on the first cars at Wellington station.
The British were obviously bent on being conciliatory. The Belgians
likewise. Mussollili, after having received Secretary Eden of England on
Feb. 26, 1934, and listened to the report of his negotiations in Berlin, de-
clared himself to be in agree1nent with "the fonnula advocated by Hitler:
creation of a Gennan anny of 300,000 1nen, stabilization of tl1e otl1er
annies at the present level." France found herself in a dile1nma: to concur
in an Anglo-Gennan agreement, or lie in wait for tl1e train and derail it
CHAPTER
THE ARMIES OF THE PEOPLE
or a long tiine, even the idea of pron1otions unconnected with

class had been beyond the caste mentality of the Reichswehr,
which, in its own fashion, was ultimately just another aspect
of the class struggle. National Socialism, on the other hand,
1neant to see to it that the classes no longer opposed each
other and tore one another apart, but rather coordinated their aspirations
within a frrunework of strict cooperation, both h1 the anny and outside it
To hear his carping adversruies tell it, Ernst Roehm, leader of the SA,
had enrolled people of little or no background in his SA units. And that
was more or less tl1e truth. Several. of his leaders were even fonner pr<r
letariru1S who were anything but scholarly in their behavior.
But then had not Napoleon-Napoleon whom Adolf Hitler so much
adnlired, a color likeness of whon1 he had drawn in his youth, and a bust
of who1n his labor 1ninister, Ley, kept on his work table-had not
Napoleon recn1ited a very considerable number of his 2,000 generals
fr01u ainong quite 1nodest citizens, even from ainong fonner "proles"?
Gen. Gouvion Saint Cyr was the son of a tanner; Chabert, the son of a
baker; Debilly, tlle son of a potter; Oudinot, the son of a cooper. Massena
had been a ship's boy; Esteve, a locksmith; Jourdan, a haberdasher;
Brune, a printer; Lannes, a dyer's apprentice. Gen. Petit had been a slave
trader. Alnong these generals of Napoleon there were even a parish priest
a11d four se1nh1ariru1S, the most celebrated of whom, Murat, was ousted
from the clergy after a scandal involving a woman. Several hundred of
these generals of the en1pire had begun their military careers as silnple
soldiers: notably Junot, Gerard, Reille, Exelmans, Cambronne and
Suchet, arnong tl1e most famous.
As for tlle leaders appointed by Roehm, in some cases it went to tl1eir
heads. Several, unquestionably, quickly took on tlle ways of pashas,
carousing and filling their pockets. These shameless ones came to a bad
end and in several cases were executed. Napoleon's generals had not
been little plaster saints eitl1er, witll halos floating above their plumes.
M~na had been a notorious pillager, looting Roman palaces. Augereau
and Brune had been renowned in tlle anny of Italy for their depredations.
There was not one of Napoleon's generals in Holland who failed to cany
off whole wagon loads of furniture, linens and kitchenware. Gen. Van-
danune acted like a veritable furniture mover wherever he went.
Dipping into the till, private or public, was a general custom in the
French empire's armies. Almost all the generals were gamblers. Some were
very heavy drinkers, notably Lahoussaye; Desolzeaux, who was completely
drunk when he lost the Battle of Pont-de-See; and also Fromentin. And
Raoul. And Froissard. And Scherer. And Bonnaire, Tunck, Loret, Chevalier
and Bonnard. The most redoubtable boozer in Napoleon's armies was Gen.
Bi$on, who, according to Brillat Savarin, used to empty eight bottles of
wine one after anotller. The most colorful was Gen. Henri Latour, who,
after a fonnidable drinking bout, had kis.sed a negro and, according to a
report by Gen. Hoche, had ended up going to bed with some butchers.
There were even two generals who were bigamists: Gen. Sarrazin and Gen.
GuiUaume de Vaudoucourt Five generals had been caught in the very act
of forgery, notably Napoleon's own brother, Louis Bonaparte.
Bonnamy and Duhesne invalided lily-livered conscripts out of the
anny in exchange for hard cash. Not many of these high-ranking officers
were dismissed under the empire: 27 in all, or about two per year, out of
2,42.8 generals.
And we can't forget their incredible follies. They were sometltlng quite
different from the incident in 1934, when a high-ranking SA officer was
proudly prancing his horse and was thrown to the ground, crestfallen,
before tlle troops. Murat used to put in an appearance at five o'clock in
the morning as if he were at the Mardi Gras, dressed in green velvet and
wearing a fabulous plumed hat topped with a high crest Junot, in Dalma-
tia, hitched reindeer shod with gold to his calash carriage. He had turned
up naked at a reception, wearing only his Sam Browne belt He would
TIIE ARMIES OFTIIE PEOPLE 347
In June 1940, after the

collapse of the French
capitalist regime and its
surrender to National So•
cialist Germany, Hiller vis-
ited Napoleon's tomb in
an event he called the
finest moment in his life.
Napoleon was a radical
populist who had rejected
both the communism of
the Paris mob and the
capitalism of the British
Empire in his effort to
forge a new European
order.
WIKIPEDIA
later beco1ne insane. A dozen other of Napoleon's generals would also

lose their nlincls. 1\venty-four would conunit suicide. But with all of then1
Napoleon had nevertheless conquered the whole of Europe.
The French e1nperor had sought to reduce U1e depredations of his
generals by satisfying their appetites with anotl1er fonn of enriclunent
more in keeping wiU1 the law. Seven hundred and ninety of the1n were re-
warded with n1tmificcnt inco1nes. Massena, tl1e nmnber one looter, was
awarded 683,840 francs per year for life (in gold francs of tl1e e1npire);
Davout: 910,840 francs; Ney: 1,028,973 francs; Berthier: 1,245,945 francs.
At runes even collateral relatives received gratuities. TinlS, the son ofl\'1ar-
shal Berthier's n1istress, Sopransi, was awarded an ruun1al inco1ne of
5,000 gold francs. These nntltiple acts of generosity did not in the slightest
put ru1 end to the rapacity of generals of Massena's type.
Anotl1er n1easure was taken by tl1e emperor to satisfy, this tilne the
worldly vanity of his wruTiors: tl1e Legion of Honor, tl1e 1narshalsh.ip and
ennoble1nenl All except 48 of the1n (tlmt is to say, 2,380 generals out of
2,428) received the red ribbon of the Legion of Honor. And that's not
counting a shower of decorations from a number of other countries

where Napoleon had established h.iinself. The marshalship quickly turned
into a hatchery: 26 n1arshaJs., some of whom were named even after the
deatl1 of tl1e e111peror.
And tlmt did not suffice. Marshals and generals were raised to the rank
of nobility by tl1e hundreds: 845 of tllem in all. There were four princes:
Davout, Ney, Massena-tlle greatest looter in tlle army-and Berthier,
who had already been awarded an income of 1.25 million gold francs and
a grandiose chateau, tlle chateau of Chambord. Tw-enty-three others be-
can1e dukes; 193 became counts; 680 became barons; 117 were lmighted.
Son1e of tl1em remained louts in spite of everything. The marshals' wives
were not always noted for tlleir refined language. With no inhibition at
all, Lefevre's wife, who had become duchess of Danzig, would say, "It is
we who are tlle princesses.,,
Their husbands atoned for much by their valor: 230 generals died in
combat. Counting all of tllem, tlley received over 4,000 wounds in battle.
A notorious looter like Bonnamy suffered 20 bayonet wounds in the sin-
gle battle of Moscow. Detres was wounded 22 times, 19 of them by saber.
RatTet, 23 times, 21 of them bayonet wounds. Gen. Andre Adrien Joseph
La Bruyere, a rustic at best, took the prize: 31 wounds, the last of which
killed him at tlle Battle of Canope in early 1801.
That great popular army of tlle French Revolution and the empire-
the army of Roehrn's dreams-had sounded its drums from Seville to
Berlin, to Vienna and to Moscow, and from Amsterdam to Ravenna, to
Rome and to tlle Bay of Naples. It combined the best and the worst. In
gathering together 3 million men, Roehm, too, was going to have among.5t
those impromptu leaders, and in addition t.o a great number of brave men,
a certain number of blackguards and profiteers.
Hitler punished some of tllem very severely, even had several of them
shot, but he also at times closed his eyes t.o a certain amount of brutality
and unscrupulous behavior on the part of militants who were morally
still salvageable. That was not the main problem.
The real problem was tllat the SA was neitller strategically nor tech-
nically prepared for a job as big as tllat of transforming itself into a real
army, and above all into the only army. Half of the SA officers had never
been soldiers, since they were too young and tllere had been no compul-
sory military service in Germany since 1918. Roehm himself had been
only a captain among tllousands of others. He was valiant but not pre-
THE ARMIES OF THE PEOPLE I 349
pared for the responsibilities of a high command. He had a lieutenant

colonel or two around him, but they were more symbolic than otherwise.
Arnong the flower of the SA, the only one who possessed any milit.ary ge-
nius was Gen. Ludendorff. But he was muddleheaded, too far along in
years, and confused by his theosophical whims. By 1933 he was long gone
from the National Socialist movement.
Napoleon's generals had been trained militarily over the course of
many years in the school of hard knocks, often coming up through the
ranks and rising only after having thoroughly learned their profession of
anns, for the most part on the battlefield in one combat after another.
And they were led by a genius in warfare such as the world had not seen
since Alexander the Great.
Roehm didn't measure up, and his valiant cohorts didn't either. Their
lack of military preparation was evident. To liquidate the old professional
annY, the Reichswehr, abruptly was scarcely possible and in the circum-
stances would even have been mad. It would have resulted in a complete
military muddle in Germany for several years, leaving a weak Gennany
poised at tl1e brink of a yawning crater.
Stalin, facing a somewhat similar problem in 1937 and 1938, had liq-
uidated some 32,000 generals and superior officers-whom he branded
as adherents of the old regime-in order to replace them with a com-
pletely submissive Red Army that he would be able to keep strictly under
his own fearlul control. He had accomplished that much, to be sure. But
in thus savagely and radically destroying the framework of his anny, he
very nearly killed the USSR. Because of it, at the end of autumn of 1941,
Russia's fate would hang by a thread. The new makeshift Communist
leaders of the Red Army, most of them come out of nowhere, would
nearly all reveal a total lack of competence in the campaign of the sum-
mer and autumn of 1941: incapable even of maintaining telephone and
radio contact and allowing themselves to be encircled everywhere.
In just a few weeks, the bulk of their arn1ament and several million of
their soldiers would fall into the hands of the invader. The direction of an
anny, or even of a division or a regiment, requires training and knowledge.
A general must be master of his profession and have long studied and
practiced it in the academies or in the field. Stalin's neophytes ran from
defeat to defeat into the emptiness to the rear. Only the weather and the
tremendous support of the Americans would enable them to fonn the
new Soviet anny and thereafter reach Berlin in 1945.
:150 I HITLER DEMOCRAT
If l\{ussolini's disastrous adventure on the Greek frontier at the end

of 1940, opening tl1e Balkans to the British, had not cost Hitler five weelG
in the spring of 1941 and he had been able to launch his invasion of the
USSR on l\1ay 10, 1941, as plruu1ed, rather tl1an 40 days later as it turned
out, Gudelian's tanks would have been beyond Moscow by nlid-October
of 1941, in perfect weather. The following 1nontl1 tl1e war in tl1e USSR
would have been over, before the new young Soviet co1mnanders had
c01ne to the fore. The govenunent authorities, the diplo1natic corps, ru1d
even Lenin's mununy, looking quite yellow in its glass case, had been
evacuated to a location lnmdreds of kilo1neters fro1n Moscow. It was only
on account of this historic delay that Stalin escaped total defeat in 1941
ru1d tl1e elimination of his regi1ne-and no doubt also of his person.
He would still have to endure tenible reverses at the Dnieper and the
Don, at the K\1bru1 ru1d in the Caucasus, ru1d see the Gennans get clear to
the Volga River in August of 1942 before it had been possible somehow
to fonn s01ne fairly decent cadres. Her belated adjustinent cost Rus.5ia
nlillions of deaths. Had they been well led, the Soviet annies would have
been spared nine-tentllS of their losses. They would re1nain ve1y deficient
right to tile end, supporting themselves thru1ks only to the crutches-the
tens of thousru1ds of plru1es and tfillks-provided by Mr. Roosevelt, the
true "Hero of the Soviet Union."
It had taken Stalin 10 years to co1ne up with a competent high com-
n1and. Hitler, who had been aware of the Roehm situation, was about to
give hiin short notice. Because of the "gigantic purges," Stalin-and with
him, Conm1unisn1-had co1ne within an inch of being destroyed.
Gennru1y in 1933 was running much greater risks than was the far-
away Soviet Union. She was surrounded by relentless adversaries. For
15 years they had held her by tl1e throat. She had been bled dry. Six nill-
lion unemployed were strangling beneatl1 Gennany's destroyed econoniy.
She was at the mercy of her neighbors. Her one and only protection then
was her Reichswehr. Vulnerable at any 111oment to a treacherous attack,
the 'Third Reich could not have resisted for more thru1 a few weeks, sur-
rounded as it tl1en was by French, Czech ru1d Polish annies tl1at were five
times as strong as the Reicl1Swehr ru1d were possessed, on tl1e land ru1d
in the air, of powetful ru111S that Gem1any entirely lacked in 1933.
In the face of a peril so formidable ru1d above all so close at hand, to
disrupt tJ1at Reicl1Swehr ru1d replace it on a sudden ilnpulse witl1 an SA
anny perhaps 10, 20 or 30 times as strong, but which had not received
THE ARMIES OF THE PEOPLE I 351
the slightest nillita.ry training, that would have placed the Reich in infi-
nitely n1ore danger than Stalin faced after the extennination of his 32,000
1
generals and senior officers. Stalin, however, didn t have to fear an inva-
sion at that time. He had believed that he would have a good many years
ahead of him and could therefore send tens of thousands of men to their
graves who were in his way. Tune, he tl1ought, would provide him with
otl1er cadres who would submit like robots to his tyrannical rule. Ger-
n1any could afford no such illusion.
Her opponents, pres.5ing hard against the borders of her territory for
the past 15 years, could leap on her tile mo1nent they saw her showing
signs of life. And while thus n1nning the risk of swift annihilation, it was
utterly unthinkable to tllrow away tlle Reichswehr, which, however small
and however deficient socially, was tlle sole coherent means of defense
t11at had survived after the collapse of 1918.
Roelun had shown a sound point of view on a number of things. He
had discerned some real faults of which Hitler was equally aware. Main-
taining the conservative Reichswehr just as it stood was a strictly tempo-
rary solution. It would take patience, flexibility and years perhaps to
succeed in giving it anotl1er spirit. Thousands of young officers with a
faith in Hitler, 1nen of character and boldnes.5, 1nen capable of imagining
like Hitler and with Hitler tl1e revolutionary perspectives of a strategy
and tactics invented all over again, would have to be introduced little by
little, and without too much bruising of existing prejudices, into tlle very
heru.t of that Reichswehr now fallen behind the times.
In theory, Roelun was not wrong. But in practice he had neither the
level-headedness nor especially the technical qualifications needed to
fom1 an enonnous popular army witllin a short span of time. Hitler would
create it slowly, taking great pains, but still without achieving complete
success. To the very end, bitter, ambitious and reactionary members of
the high corrunand general staff, or visionaries, would try to annul his
military refonns, to ove1throw him and even to assassinate him.
Gaston Ooumergue was a French communist and collaborator with both British cap-
italism and Soviet Bolshevism who helped form the so-called Popular Front that
brought to power the French Jewish Prime Minister Leon Blum. Ironically, the anti-mil-
itary policies of the Popular Front helped weaken the French state sufficiently that it
could be destroyed by the German military only six years later.
LIBRARY OF CONGRESS, PRINTS AND PHOTOGRAPHS DIVISION
CHAPTER
THE CASE OF PARIS 1934
ranee was going to refuse any arrangement in the most brutal

fashion-witl1out forgetting, howeve1~ to utilize tl1e subtle dis-
tinctions of diplo1natic flexibility. In the response sent to Mr.
Eden by the French ntlnister of foreign affairs, dated March
27, 1934, we read: "Pait Vof the peace treaty must re1nain in-
tact, and we are detennined to 1naintain it at all cost."
Not the slightest acceptance of negotiation of even a partial objective.
H Adolf Hitler was not satisfied, M. Barthou added, France would face
him "at all cost." Barthou, the lecherous little old man, was already bran-
dishing his wooden saber.
But in March of 1934, France was having great difficulty getting herself
out of a t.ren1endous politico-financial scandal, the Stavisky affair.
Stavisky was a Jewish emigre who crune, like so 1nany othera, fro111
the vastness of Slavic Eurasia, where several million of his bearded Is-
raelite coreligionists in dirty frock coats, driven fron1 everywhere under
the lash of tl1e knout, were settled in unsavory ghettos, way stations on
their nilllenary 1nigrations. An e1nulator of Julius Bannat-the Jewish
S\vindler who, before Hitler, had besnurched a nmnber of personages of
the Weitnar Republic-Stavisky had been hnplicated in France in a se-
ries of scandals in which the Parlirunent, prostitution and cocaine were
all entangled together. Well protected by higher-ups, he had always bril-
liantly gotten out of his 1nany 1nisadventures. One of his trials had been
postponed 21 tbnes.
Like his coreligionist Barmat, Stavisky had built up his power by com-
promising numerous senators and deputies with substantial bribes, as
well as several Cabinet ministers and even, it was said, one of the highest
n1agistrates of France. Bribed also were: a prosecuting attorney named
Pressard (a great fancier of negresses); the brother-in-law of Chautemps;
a fom1er Cabinet head; and one of the most important radical dignitaries
and Freen1asons of tl1e de1nocratic regilne.
To facilitate his operations, Stavisky even had a special safe-conduct
pass issued by the secret police. Stavisky had been arrested-caught by
accident, at a garden party in full swing at a luxurious villa in Chaville-
for a mere trifle of uncovered checks amounting to 7 million francs (the
pay of a nillitary officer for 350 years).
Every day, one or two more politicians were discovered in the mire.
They were dragged out by the conservative press, loathsome with pus
and reeking of the plague. "I am quite worried about the organization of
a true fascist party in this country," sighed future War Minister Mandel
(his true name was Jeroboam Rothschild), who truly had no desire to see
himseJf stripped of his political omnipotence by vulgar Frenchmen, espe-
cially if they were rightists.
Hundreds of thousands of French patriots had wanted in 1934 to give
their country a strong government whose composition was not the result
of intenninable and sordid bargaining and the dividing up of temporary
Cabinet portfolios according to compromise and com.1ption.
France dreamed of a true leader who would command, who would
allow administrations to last, to produce up to their potential and to as-
sume responsibility. But the leader did not exist. There were half a dozen
restless squadron leaders who were generally honest, but who had nei-
ther drive nor tenacity, nor the genius to attract and organize the masses,
nor the imagination to create anything on a grand scale.
Their followers had their hearts in the right place, the desire to give of
themselves, and to renew their country. But few among them were sons
of the worldng cl3$-that is, tough men, men who have nothing to lose
in a revolution. They belonged for the most part to the middle classes, t.o
a fundamentally peaceful bourgeoisie or demibourgeoisie, and often sa,v
no further than their own hard-won special interests, the taxes that were
crushing them, the politicians that were robbing them. To win in politics
it is necessary to go all out, to risk everything, to get through every trap
and every obstruction, never being willing to receive a blow without being
THE CASE OF PARIS 1934 I 355
detennined to give it back and then some. Without a strong leader whose
eloquence shakes up the masses, whose main care night and day and
above all is to gain the adherence of the working class-socially the most
threatened and without whose visceral support nothing can be done;
without troops imbued with an attack mentality, solidly officered and
.finnly commanded, the most brilliant national revival must end in failure.
Only a leader with a character of steel, who is constantly active, who
turns his audience into burning brands, can undertake the conquest of
tl1e people. It takes charisma and the power of command to forge an ir-
resistible unity out of a vacillating mob. Only a leader who has genius can
take p~ession of a nation. France had a half dozen mini-Hitlers; it had
no real one.
Poorly led, but at the end of their patience and thoroughly disgusted,
the French masses bravely took to the streets of Paris on Feb. 6, 1934. The
government was immediately seized by panic and fired on tl1e wave of
demonstrators as they surged toward the Chamber of Deputies, mowing
down several dozen dead and a thousand wounded.
Despite the fusillade, the human flood rushed on down to the bridge
of the Seine, two steps from the chamber, where deputies and Cabinet
ministers were trembling with fear. At that moment, all was possible. A
true leader at the head of those 100,000 or 200,000 exasperated French-
men would have overwhelmed the lot in an hour and thrown the 500
politicians into the river.
"If they had wanted to," wrote one of the deputies, still shaken up after
having been among those hemmed in, "they could easily have entered the
chamber. But they didn't do it So it was obviously not a prepared plot, be-
cause if the demonstrators had intended it, all the deputies and adminis-
tration could have been surrounded, as we were at the Chamber of
Deputies, and shot or drowned in less than an hour's time. We were all
convinced that the demonstrators were going to go into the chamber at
any moment" (G. Tabouis, op. cit., 183.)
The fear was such that in order to make the assailants think the
deputies had slipped away and that an attack was now pointless, the
president plunged the palace into darkness. The ushers turned off all
the lights, right down to the last lantern. Paralyzed with fear and grop-
ing in the dark, all the bigwigs fled, Cabinet ministers in the lead, by
way of a back door the mob didn't know about that led to the Rue de
l'Universite. Even the leftist press, though ashamed and confused, had
to adtnit it. The repo1ter of L'OeU,vre wrote:
It ,vas a nmtter of giving the rioters tl1e ilnpression that there

was no longer anyone in the Palais Bourbon, and that conse-
quently tllere was no point in their de1nonstration. Thus, all the
lights were put out. And it was out tl1e rear of the chrunber to
tl1e Rue de l'Universite, in the dark of the night, that the Cabinet
nlinisters and otl1er personages made tlleir exit. (G. Tabouis, op.
cit., pp. 183f.)
The Cabinet nlinisters sneaked off into absolute obscurity. Any deputy
with at1Y dignity at all would have faced up to tl1e situation, even if it killed
hiin. But runong 30 nlinisters ai1d 500 deputies, there wasn't one who
risked getting a black eye. That was nonnal. A man doesn't die for some-
tl1ing he doesn't believe in. And those nmaways didn't believe.
For son1e hours tl1at night in Paris, power was witlllll the reach of any
detemlined man. Prin1e Minister Daladier had resigned. At the Palais de
l'Elysee, tl1e president of the republic, Albert Lebrun, was collapsed in
an annchair, his anns hanging loose as e111pty stockings, totally unrespon-
sive. No n1atter who came in ru1d spoke to hiin. He had tears in his eyes;
he was often like that. He'd have gone off to the hotel to sleep if anyone
had gotten him a taxi.
The republic was for sale or hire, could even have been had for noth-
ing that night. Some of the demonstrators irmnediately thought of the
most prominent figure in the opposition, M. Chiappe, the ex-prefect of
tl1e Paris police, who had been ousted fro1n his post by Daladier a fe,v
days before. He was the great hope of the French right. So at 10 o'clock
in the evening they ran to llis apartJ:nent to have him co1ne ru1d take over
at the Elysee, tlle office lying fallow, so to speak.
Chiappe had just taken his bath. He was in his bathrobe, getting
ready for bed. It was in1possible to persuade hiln to put on his shoes
and pants. When he woke up the next 1norning, it was a lost cause.
Clliappe hitnself told 1ne that sto1y one day in August of 1940 over an
aperitif at Fouquet's. Pitiful.
TI1e next day, tlle city of Paris looked as if there had been a disaster,
what witl1 broken shop windows, bun1ed-out cars, and the hospitals
crowded witll the wounded. Meanwhile, since no other career crook was
available to seive in the discredited Parliament, Lebn1n had been
"Voronoff-ized" [i.e., "rejuvenated": from Serge Voronoff (1866-1951), a

Russian physician in Paris; director of tl1e laboratory of experimental sur-
gery, College de France (1917); known for researches on the grafting of
animal glands on hu1nan beings for rajuvenation]. Then Lebrun was re-
1ni.nded of tl1e existence of an old former president of the republic named
Gaston Dou1nergue (1863-1937), who was living in retirement in a large
village in the south of France-and was known among his country neigh-
bors as Gastounet
Gastounet, 71, was a pensioner with a salt-and-pepper mustache; he
was somewhat bald and tended to cross his hands over his belly like a
canon listening to his bishop. He had been a magistrate in Indochina
and in Algeria at the end of the preceding century, 15 years before World
War I. That is to say that he could unquestionably take a detached atti-
tude toward life.
Life was pleasant in his colonial-style house, amid his arrowwood
bushes and his decorations framed like diplomas, and the siestas he en-
joyed. From tiine to time he picked a bunch of grapes in his little garden
or worked bending over his salad vegetables. He was complacent by na-
ture; he never broke anything. But in Paris, now, everytlling had just gone
sn1ash, and it was iinperative that the democratic crockery be mended.
They had thought of hiin. Two days later he was appointed president of
the council of nli.nisters by Lebrun. To iinpress the public still reeling from
tl1e catastrophe, Gastounet had brought together five former prime min-
isters to serve on his administrative tea.in. That looked serious. It would
look national. "I 1nust not forget that I am very old," he repeated.
But he did forget The old man was a little behind the times. He was
already seven years old at tl1e tilne of the war of 1870, and had then had
as his conte1nporaries Badinguet and Gainbetta; so, for him, Germany
,vas tl1e hereditary enemy-repugnant, loathed, good for nothing but to
be massacred and squashed. He was firm in his convictions, and he would
stick fiercely to that mania. "We are going to resist Hitler," he decreed
fro1n the mo1nent he arrived in Paris. That was his first preoccupation. In
fact, it was altnost tl1e only one.
What could Hitler possibly have done to hin1? Had he thrown stones
at his cats at Ni1nes? He was a "Pn1ssian." (An old French term for any-
one who spoke German is "Prussian." Of course, Hitler was actually an
Austrian.) That was enough. At the most dangerous moment in the
20th-century history of Frailce, tl1e man placed at the head of the coun-
try ,vas a graybeard of the previous century, crammed with ancient ha-
treds, obstinate, as old 111en often are, and a man whom nothing would
ever change. Within the year he would be sent back to his remote little
house to contemplate his cabbages and arrowwood bushes once more.
But in tl1e n1eantime, he would have led France into a cul-de-sac she
would not get out of before the catastrophe of May 1940.
The English had immediately insisted to President Dou1nergue that
negotiations be taken up again with Hitler, "the Prussian bugaboo." Since
Jan. 29, 1934, a British memorandwn directed at the resumption of nego-
tiations with Hitler had gone unanswered by the French. In the month
following Doumergue's appointment of March 28, 1934, the London gov-
ernment had become insistent: What exactly was required in the nature
of "guarantees of perfonnance that would satisfy the French govern-
ment"? Great Britain added, in her official note, that "a rapid agreement
11
based on our close collaboration is greatly desired. After two months of
waiting, British impatience was beginning to show.
This time-it was now April 6, 1934-the Doumergue government de-
cided to give birth to a note, as fuzzy however as a fog, and drafted in a
sibylline tongue. "We cannot say in reply that we accept" The proposal
is "too general not to be equivocal." "It does not take into account ques-
tions of a technical and juridical nature which are still in suspense and
cannot be resolved by the mere posing of them. The French language is
11
noted for its clarity. That was hardly the case here. A bit later the British
government insisted again, but Paris continued to reply evasively to Sir
John Simon, the British secretary of foreign affairs: "The French govern-
ment very shortly intends to provide clarification."
But the French obscurity continued unabated. On April 16, 1934, nev-
ertheless, his majesty's government would receive a memorandum. But
it was not signed by M. Doumergue. By whom then? -By Hitler.
The Gennan chancellor, instead of cloaldng himself in fog like tl1e
French ministers, took pains to put down officially in black and white the
concessions he had made verbally to Secretary Eden at the time of his
visit to Berlin in the month of January. He renewed in writing his offer re-
lating to the Reich's air force, that it would not exceed 50 percent of tl1e
French air forces, metropolitan and colonial, or 33 percent of the military
aircraft of the powers bordering on Germany, whichever suited tl1em. In
connection with the words "bordering on, it was noted that the USSR
11
did not have any common borders with tlle Reich. With regard to tl1e ter-
rible SA and SS, which so appalled the average Frenchmen-filled with

fright in their movie seats at the mere sight of the flag.5 with the hooked
cross-Hitler's docu1nent could not have been 1nore clear: He would limit
the SA's formations to a strictly political role. They would not be able to
act militarily in any way. So stated the chancellor's coffilnunique:
The government of the Reich is determined to enact measures

establishing the nonrnilitary character of the SA and the SS and
to have their application supervised by a board of control. These
measures are as follows: 1. The SA will not be armed. 2. They will
not be instructed in the use of arms. 3. They will neither be mus-
tered nor trained in military can1ps. 4. They will not be instntcted
either directly or indirectly by officers of the regular army.
With respect to the air force, Hitler renewed word for word the pro-
posals made to Mr. Eden at Berlin:
The force of said air fleet will not exceed 50 percent of the
French air forces, metropolitan and colonial, or 33 percent of the
total of the air fleets of the powers bordering on Germany,
whichever of those two figures shall be sn1aller.
Hitler carried his concessions well beyond anytltlng the fonner ene-
mies of Gennany n1ight still have expected after their failure in Geneva
Hitler's memorandu1n stated in conclusion:
The Gennan govern1nent voluntarily agrees that the disarn1a--

ment of the other powers need not begin tmtil after the expiration
of tl1e first five years following tltls agreen1ent. The govenlffient
of Germany accepts all other stipulations of tl1e British memo-
randum, including the setting up of inspection. (The accuracy of
tl1ese three quotations can be verified in Benoist-Mechin, His-
toire de fthmee Allemande, Vol. ID, pp. 154f.)
This triple offer of Hitler's was all tl1e more meritorious in that he him-
self felt tlrreatened by the opposition of certain of his SA leaders. He
would have to bring the1n sharply to heel barely two montllS later, in the
course of the historic "Night of the Long Knives," on June 30, 1934.
360 I Hn'LER DEMOCRAT
The British ainbassador at Berlin, Sir Eric Phipps, had been most
agreeably surprised by the extensiveness of these proposals. When trans-
nutting the 1ne1norandwn to lus govenunent, he had added a postscript;
"Tile suggestion put fortJ\ by Mr. Hitler himself of subjecting his organi-
zations (tl1e SA and the SS) to automatic and periodic inspection, to
which he consents, see1ns incontestably useful."
Inspection was accepted. A delay of five years accepted. "Voluntarily,,,
added Hitler.
Now that the helping hand had been extended, was Paris going to
seize it? Or spurn it with conte1npt?
It spurned it with contempt, and violently. The affair didn't drag on. On
the vecy next day, April 17, 1934, the reply was made known. It was not
even a yes or a no; it was a fonnal refusal to pursue any diplomatic dis--
cussion "of any kind whatsoever." (Benoist-Mechin, op. cit., 155.) Thus
France gave notice to tlte English with cutting clarity that she was op-
posed in advance to any discussion. That left M. Jean Viennet, experi-
enced French politician though he was, completely aghast: "The intent
to break off relations is evident.11 He added: "It is a categorical refusal ·and
big stick diplomacy.... France has chosen armed peace." (Jean Viennet:
Limit.ation des Armements, 1,233.)
There was consternation in London. They were prepared for some
nondisclosures, as always, but not for a rebuff so radical and deliberately
definitive. "It is a 'no' of fatal historical consequence, 11 sighed Lord Loth-
ian, one of the most prominent personalities of the British empire. When
MllS.50lini, who was still a friend of the Allies at that time, learned how the
French had lashed out, he could only predict catastrophe: "In the end,
'her majesty the cannon' will do the talldng." The French reaction had
been so clumsy it was almost unbelievable.
"It is vecy easy to get the impression," Benoist-Mechin observed, "that
they don't want, that they never have wanted, a general agreement." (Op.
cit., p. 156.)
It would take a long time before anyone would see clearly amidst this
capricious wrath. In reality, the French minister offoreign affairs, M. Jean
Barthou, had not meant to burn his bridges so abruptly, with such an al-
most provocative brutality. When the text of the German note had been
communicated to him, his first reaction was one of common sense:
"Wouldn't it be more intelligent to strike Germany over some more impor-
tant action, rather than to collide with her over a mere question of regu-
lations? Won't a refusal today just play into Hitler's hand, so that he can
tum to his people and say, 'You see, we want to negotiate, but France
doesn't want to; and France sets herself up as the sole judge'?" (G.
Tubouis, op. cit., p. 193.)
Barthou, the French foreign minister, was so firmly disposed to re-
sponding positively to England, and indirectly to Gennany, that he indi-
cated his decision that very morning to the secretary general of foreign
affairs, Alexis Leger, in the presence of the reporter of L'Oeuvre, To.bows:
"I've made my decision, and it's definitely a conciliatory note we must
write." (Ibid.) The draft of the note to be submitted to the Council of Min-
isters was written within the hour by M. Barthou himself and by M. Alexis
Leger. Yet the next day, Barthou was going to notify the British of the
exact opposite.
How is this turnaround to be explained? Benoist-Mechin, the histo-
rian, would write: "M. Barthou's attitude is so unreasonable that we try to
find extenuating circumstances for him. M. Viennot, for his part, claims
that tl1e note of 17 April was forced on him by M. Downergue." (Op. cit.,
page reference omitted.) Our M. Viennot had a keen nose. Barthou would
later reveal in private what had happened. Premier Doumergue, without
the knowledge of his minister of foreign affairs, had personally concocted
the text breaking off relations. Barthou, much aggrieved, had confided it
to his secretary-general, Alexis Leger, after the council meeting:
I was practically the only one in the council of ministers to de-

fend our draft of the note. The committee had drawn up a note of
categorical refusal tl1at was adopted unanimously. Today is the
most tragic day of my life. I have to set aside my convictions....
[l]n short, I was obliged to let their draft version be substituted for
mine. From now on, we shall need to pursue a policy of great
courage.(G.Thbouis,op.cit.,p.193t)
He had been singularly lacldng in that "great courage" beginning with

that first day. In a single evening he had suddenly changed sides because
he didn't wish to displease his president, the vengeful little old pensioner
from the sticks who, because he was still brooding peevishly about 1870,
had decided to tell the Gennans to getlost. 'lb the charge d'oJfaires of the
United Kingdom, Mr. Campbell, who had come to voice his irritation and
amazement to Barthou, the latter had replied in embarrassment: "I lmow
;«;2 I HITLER DEMOCHAT
very well tltat tJ,e note will be a grave disappointJnent to the British Cab-
inet. But when a govenunent has six fonner prune nlinisters ainong its
1ne1nbers, five of who1n are fonner ntlnisters of foreign affairs...." His
voice trailed off in ellipsis.
One of &uthou's colleagues in tJ,e chrunber of deputies guffawed sar-
castically, "Having no one else to betray, Louis Barthou is betraying his
feelings." Anotl,er added 1nore perspicaciously: "I know Barthou well.
For hint to insist tJ,at way on tl,e entire authorship of tlle note n1eans he
has no hand in it"
Extricating himself tltus con1pletely had not been especially glorious
for U,e n1inister. But how many of tl,e political contortionists who snick-
ered behind his back wouldn't have done the saine tlling? In spite of every-
thing, tl1e affair could not readily be considered over. The aversion
Doumergue had harbored for anything "Prussian" for more than two-
thirds of a century could not by itself have provoked such consternation.
TI,ere was certainly something else tl1at was being kept hidden. What tl1ey
were hiding was tl,at for several montllS tl1e French goverrunent-which
ought to have been put on guard by shnilar errors in intelligence andjudg-
ment-had been more tltan ever convinced that Hitler's fall was hnminent
TI1at being so, why should tlley have discussions with a 1nan who was
likely at any n1oment to be ousted from power?
The Disannament Conference in Geneva had previously fallen into an
identical trap. Since then, however, tllere had been the 40 million votes
that Hitler had obtained in his plebiscite. That ought to have ilnpressed
M. Dou1nergue a little more tllan some questionable reports fro1n Berlin
infon1tlng ltlm of tl1e subversive activities being carried on by some of
Hitler's opponents, so1ne of them consumed by their own earlier failure,
otllers who hoped to control the future. The French runbassador, 1\1.
Fran~ois-Poncet, was informed of tllese preparations. He had met tlle
principal conspirators on various occasions, had even dined witl1 tl1em
for confidential talks in tl1e private rooms of Horcher's restaurant He had
also n1et tl1em very discreetly in the villas of friends, or in secrecy in cer-
tain covert diplomatic residences.
The most important of these conspirators, and a personal friend of
the French ambassador, was tlle fonner chancellor, Gen. Schleicher, who,
having been unable to overthrow Hitler a few hours before his accession
to power, was biding ltls time and broodh1g over ltls revenge. Yet, in 1933,
Hitler had treated hiln considerately. He had even allowed hi.In for some
n1onths to continue his private life-when he was no longer anybody po-

litically-in the building reserved for rninistera of the national defense. It
was not until the spring of 1934, that is, after more than a year's delay,
that Schleicher had settled in his new home of Babelsberg on the banks
of tJ1e Havel. Before his 1nove, while he was still living in the official apart-
ments, Schleicher had already been very free with scornful observations
about Hitler. The ex-secretary of state, von Rheinbaben, has related:
In the course of the winter of 1933-1934, my wife and I re-

ceived nighttilne telephone calls from an informer who did not
wish to give his name, but who pleaded with us passionately
to warn Schleicher: It was urgent. (Rheinbaben, Del Kaiser al
Canciller Adenauer ["From the Kaiser to Chancellor Ade-
nauer"], p. 233.)
Von Rheinbaben had hunied to implore the general to moderate his

,vords. The latter instead made them worae fron1 week to week and pre-
dicted the iinminent collapse of National Socialism. "The president of the
Reich will have to call 1ne in very soon," he would affirm, his bald head
gleaming, "because Hitler has failed totally, and it will be up to me to
square the circle."
A week later, after a reception at tlle Romanian Embassy, Schleicher
and the French runbassador, Fran~ois-Poncet, had met again at a restau-
rant. Fran~ois-Poncet had wanted to maintain tlle completely confidential
nature of the conversation, but it remained so little confidential that the
diplomat had becon1e frightened, and he himself went to the wife of von
Rheinbaben, who frequently went horaeback riding witll Schleicher, and
asked her to infonn hiln of the danger he was running with his anti-Hitler
remarks. It did no good at all. A few days later, right at tlle Berlin Offl.cera
Club, the general had launched into a new and violent philippic against
the chancellor's foreign policy. Madame Schleicher held fortll among the
,von1en with criticis1ns equally sharp, but on tllis occasion, against the
entourage of President Hindenburg, who had discarded his wife.
Looking for allies or acco1nplices at all costs, Schleicher endeav-
ored to win over ex-Nazi leader Gregor Strasser, a notorious intriguer
,vhom Hitler had stripped of all his duties at the end of 1932, precisely
because already at that time he had planned to betray Hitler in order
to beco1ne vice chancellor in a Streicher governn1ent. The plan had
failed. Strasser thereafter was just a nobody. Nevertheless, Schleicher,

blinded by his resenbnents and his runbitions, and conscious of the
meagerness oflus support, had decided to give Gregor Strasser another
chance in tl1e govenunent he counted on establishing on the ruins of
tl1e Hitler goven1n1ent.
The general had gotten it in his head to recruit Roehm as well, the top
leader of the SA The plan worked out by Schleicher and Strasser aimed
high. Benoist-Mechin has given us its main lines: "Hitler would be as.5as-
sinated, and Schleicher would become chancellor in his place. Gregor
Str3$er would become minister of the national economy." As for Roehm,
he would be minister of the Reichswehr "because it is advisable that the
national fonnations and the anny be in the srune hands." (Benoist-Me-
chin, op. cit., 189.)
Gen. Schleicher-who offered Roehm the command of the Reich-
swehr-justl5 months earlier had been determined to put him in jail and
have the SA fonnations swept away by the Reichswehr.
The French ambassador was closely involved in these preparations.
His military attache in Berlin, Gen. Renondot, had communicated this en-
couraging prediction to Paris: "I am completely convinced that a bloody
conflict is inevitable." The principal official journal of the Doumergue
government, 1.£ Temps, had shown itself to be extremely receptive to tllis
kind of tittle-tattle. "It is quite possible," it had written, "that Hitler may
fall very quickly, and that his reputation as a miracle worker will vanish."
Before laying out his plan and his definitive list, Gen. Schleicher had met
Fran~ois-Poncet again at the home of a big banker. Schleicher's report
had been right to the point: "Hitler's fall is imminent. The days of the gov-
ernment are nwnbered. That whole gang of scoundrels will soon be
swept away."
It seems that the report to Paris of this meeting between Schleicher
and Fran~ois-Poncet had the effect of an electric shock on Pre1nier
Downergue, the old Prussian-eater of the War of 1870. "It was that con-
versation reported to M. Barthou," the United Press revealed in a news
dispatch of July 7, 1934, "that presumably incited the minister offoreign
affairs to tell the representative of a friendly power (the English diplo1nat,
Lord 'I'yrrel) that France was not disposed to make any concessions in tlle
question ofarmaments, because the days of the Hitler regime were num-
~red:" (Ibid.) That was almost word for word the temlS used by Schle-
icher m the course of his last interview with Fran~ois-Poncet.
TI1ere is no longer any doubt today about these intrigues of Schleicher

and tl1e runbassador of France. Even if the French archives, which are
still verboten, have not yet been able to reveal anytl1ing-and no doubt
they will be expurgated in tune, in the 1nanner of the diplomatic docu-
1uents of 1914-Churchill has not stood on ceremony. He has confinned
in his me1noirs the conversation between Barthou and the British ambas-
sador at Paris. P11.1dent as always, historian Benoist-Mechin was content
just to ask the question: "Would this information trans1nitted to the Quai
d'Orsay have stirred M. Barthou into breaking off the negotiations on
whatever pretext siinply to gain time, even if he had to resume them later,
when Hitler was out of the picture?" (Op. cit., 156.)
Sixteen years later, in 1974, Prof. Duroselle of the Sorbonne, an official
historian if ever tl1ere was one, having new historical material in his pos-
session, did not shrink from answering Benoist-Mechin's question with an
unequivocal yes:
The president of tl1e council (Doumergue) and Tardieu were

opposed to signing an agreement. They believed that tl1e Hitler
regilne was on the point of collapsing and that it would be easier
to negotiate with Hitler's successor. (J.B. Duroselle, Histoire
Dipwmatique de 1919 arwsjours, p. 166.)
TI1e wolf of Berlin was surely going to lose his mortal hide at any time.
Hitler's hide. Dou1nergue could already almost feel it in his fat fingers. A
little boasting by so1ne embittered Germans was all it had taken for
France to embark on a bellicose policy fraught with risk and danger. They
were gambling France on a rickety plot cooked up by incredible foreign-
ers. TI1ese confidants of Ambassador Fran~ois-Poncet were embittered
windbags, irresponsible and politically insignificant, with no authority
over the public. Only one of them was dangerous. He was the least es-
tin1able one of the group, a 1nru1 tonnented by unnatural vices. But he
had under his co1nmand the 3 1nillion 1nen of t11e SA.
If he turned traitor, he could cause havoc. He was the last accomplice
chosen by Gen. Schleicher. He had a great slashing scar across his face.
His artificial nose, granular like a strawbeny, glinm1ered like a glowwonn.
He would soon be the most iinportant figure in the tragedy of tl1e long
knives. It was Roelun.
Horst Wessel was the author of the song Die Fahne Hoch, which became the anthem
of the National Socialist German Workers Party. In 1930, he answered his door and
was shot in the face by Albrecht Hoehler, a member of the Communist Party of Ger-
many, one of a series of political assassinations that had been directed by the German
Communist leadership. Hoehler initially received a six-year prison sentence, but was
summarily executed after the rise to power of the National Socilialist government.
Here, SA men pay reverence to Wessel at his funeral in March 1930.
GERMAN FEOERALARCHIVE/102-09302
CHAPTER
THE CIVIL WAR IN THE

NATIONAL SOCIALIST PARTY
y the beginning of 1933, the millions of members of the SA

were coming almost as often from the left as from the old
right-wing organizations that were better regarded by the
army chiefs. German Hans Bernd Gisevius tells us:
The SA membership, whose numbers have greatly increased

in the past few months, is made up at least a third offormer mem-
bers of the parties of the left It is known with certainty that in the
months of June and July of 1933 there were assault detachments
formed almost entirely of Communists. They were popularly
known as "beefsteak detachments," brown on the outside and
red on the inside.
Before victory, these SA men bursting with optimism and courage

were absolutely indispensable. Several times a week they were called on
to maint:ain order at meetings. As the strong arm of the party's propa-
ganda, they gave a sound drubbing to opponents in the audience who got
too obstreperous. They had been recruited from among the ardently pa-
biotic youth of the nation. Also, in very large numbers, from the ranks of
the unemployed.
And likewise, in some instances, authentic no-goods were recruited.
368 1 IIITLEH DEMOCRAT
Some over-runbitious go-getters had tl1e appetites of ogres. As for the

good-for-notl1ings, tJ1ey 111eant to force U1eir way into the 1niddle class
witJ1 clubs. So1ne leaders driven by ainbition had been interested only in
swelling tl1e munber of tl1eir contingents, since their own iinportance was
tJms automatically also increased, ai1d brought hasty promotion to
colonel or even general. Their swift rise understandably scandalized the
colonels and generals of tl1e Reichswelu· who had undergone half a cen-
tury of toil in the old anny.
Once tJ1e revolution had co1ne to power, what indeed was Hitler going
to do with tl1ese nlillions of idealists-including tl1e reckless undesir-
ables-when he already had 6 million unen1ployed workers on his
hands? ... Over ai1d over again he had protested against the excessive in-
crease in tl1e number of SA members. But the SA leaders had turned a
deaf ear t.o his orders because they were t.oo interested personally in hold-
ing on t.o tl1e additional 1ne1nbers. In short, here cainped out on the fringes
of the constitutional government under Hitler's control were 3 million
semi-soldiers, smne oftlle1n unassuming, devoted and disciplined, otllers
brawlers or fanatics who were little inclined to return to dull legality.
Hitler had needed them. He felt great affection for tllem because many
of them were old and valiant co1npanions. He often forgave them tlleir es-
capades. Fron1 tiine t.o time he would say in their justification: "The SA is
not a school for young ladies." But he began to get ai1noyed when he
heard disturbing tales of ilie unpleasant tllings some of tl1en1 were doing.
The chief of these 3 million latter-day lansquenets (mercenary foot
soldiers) was a fonner captain nained Ernst Roehm. Had he created
Hitler, as some have said? Hitler was a 1nember of the DAP [Gennan
Workers Party] in 1919, before he had ever 1net Roelun. The latter was a
heroic, badly disabled war veteran, very n1uch tile swashbuckler, who
couldn't find his place in a defeated Gennany. He drai1k hard and often.
After November of 1919 he had continued his anny service as the officer
in charge in Munich of a military intelligence section. As an officer at-
tached t.o the Second Wantry Brigade, he had secret funds at his disposal
which he doled out t.o various rightist 1nove1nents.
This role did not satisfy his dynainic nature. He progressed from na-
tionalist organizations that were too peaceable to more turbulent nation-
alist movements. He organized secret stores of rifles, n1achine guns and
munitions, and had even salvaged a few old cannon. Thus it was that
Hitler had become acquainted witl1 Roehm in the course of the year 1919,
THE CIVIL WAR IN THE NATIONAL SOCIALIST PARTY I 369
and he had then induced him to enroll in the OAP as member No. 623.
Roehm was hearty and communicative. A familiar camaraderie was
established between Hitler and himself. They used the familiar Du with
one anotJ1er, but it had gone no further than that Hitler had genius and
had no need of Roehm to inspire him. And if all Roehm had needed was
for a man of his choosing to become a brilliant leader, he could have
tllought up 50 of the1n better able to achieve succ~ in the immediate
future (Gen. Ludendorff, for example) than the unknown and virrual raga-
muffin ti1at Hitler was in 1919.
It was thanks to his exceptional personality-and not because Roehm
had manufactured a marionette-that Hitler, on July 21, 1921, had b~
come tlle unquestioned master of the NSDAP [National Socialist Gennan
\Vorker's Party], successor to the original OAP, by 553 out of 554 votes.
Roehm's vote had been just one among 553 votes. And then there was
Hitler's eloquence: without that, there would never have been a National
Socialist Gennany. That was not a gift made by Roehm to the young
"Fuehrer" either.
Roehm was nonetheless a useful collaborator. Well known in Munich
milltacy circles, he was particularly fitted for resolving difficulties when
the autl1orities tried to pick a quarrel with the first National Socialists,
and he had been effective.
When the Marxists had used violence in an attempt to terrorize the
meetings of Hitler's party, it was Hitler, not Roehm, who had formed the
first group of battlers-80 of them in all-that he himself led to the attack
when the Reds broke into his meetings. And it was Goering, the famous
commander of the Richtl1ofen squadron-wearing the insignia of the
Order of Merit around his neck, and far more celebrated than Roehm-
who had received fron1 Hitler tl1e command of that first Sturmabtei.lung
and the mission to step up its recruitment
Goering being busy with 10 other missions, Roehm had succeeded
him. He was a valorous group leader. He kept his 1nen firmly in hand, was
endowed with an instinct for c01nbat, and he was at the same time a ca-
pable organizer.
On the night of the Munich putsch in November of 1923, he had seized
tl1e pre1nises of the Military Cominand, and he held out there for some
hours after the putsch had failed.
While Hitler was spending 12 1nonths in prison in 1924, Roehm's ca-
reer had taken wings, benefiting, as in Ludendorfrs case, from the wave
of popularity brought about by the putsch and then by the sensation of the
tiral of Adolf Hitler'.
Roelun had been elected a National Socialist deputy, and for a time he
played alone hand. He had delayed for several weeks before throwing in
his lot with Hitler again after the latter had been set free. He had not even
attended tl1e rewlion meeting. The success Hitler had met with there and
the growing strength of the renewed NSDAP brought Roelun back int:o
the fold. But an important difference was quickly going to arise between
Hitler and Roehm, involving two radically different conceptions of the
aims ~igned to the combat fonnations of the party. Roehm wanted to
tum the SA into a military organization tl1at would be virtually independ-
ent of the National Socialist movement
For Hitler, on the other hand, the SA was to have the sole mission of
enforcing National Socialism's rights in meeting-halls and in the streets.
In 1925, this conflict, which had been latent for a long time, came to a
head. Hitler dismissed Roehm, who withdrew without any scandal, and
faithful but disconsolate, he left Europe and went off to become a lieu-
tenant colonel in Bolivia, where he would remain for five years. The SA
in the meantime had grown considerably larger without Roehm. In Au-
gust of 1927, 20,000 of its members had marched in parade at the
NSDAP Third Congress. Year by year it continued to expand and be-
come more strongly structured. On Sept 14, 1930, Hitler's first great
electoral victory had burst like a bomb: 107 deputies. The SA was to be
seen prominently everywhere in the streets and was vigorously opening
the way to the future.
Unable to direct everything himself, Hitler remembered Roehm, told
himself that he must have calmed down in La Paz, and that perhaps he
could recall him from his faraway Bolivia now that millions of Gennans
followed him, Hitler, personally. On Oct. 1, 1930, Hitler summoned hin1.
In La Paz, Roehm, his mind still vibrant with the Munich saga, immedi-
ately cast aside his stars and promotions. He had scarcely arrived in Mu-
nich when Hitler, who was also much moved by his return, named Roehm
chief of staff of the SA, as well as of its privileged contingent, the SS, an
elit.e corps created to form a defensive square around the Fuehrer wher-
ever he went
In the bitterness of the great struggle from January 1931 to January
1933, the problem of the SA, whether political shock troops or future new
anny, had become blurred. It was not discussed. They were fighting. All
U1e srune, Hitler had never concealed from Roehm that he intended to
maintain his basic position. In his eyes, the Reichswehr was the only
anny; tJ1e SA was the physical and political support of the movement. In-
wardly, Roehm had not changed his opinion either. He had nothing but in-
sults for the heads of the Reichswehr, even though they were the only
ones at the time with the technical training witl1out which no army is ef-
fective. Hitler was completely aware of that need. Gisevius writes:
Hitler wished to 1nake the SA into tl1e legal troops of the party
as it were.... It was necessary to meet terror with terror, first in
tl1e meetings, then in tJ1e streets when necessary. But that wasn't
enough for officer Roehm. Since 1918 his one dream had been
the new national anny. No amount of success seemed fast enough
for him. No increase in the manpower of the SA seemed to him
sufficient. (H.B. Gisevius, op. cit., vol. I, pp. 121 ff.)
Roehm had his plan: "In the first momentum of the seizure of power,
the sooner he forced his way through the ilnpenetrable thicket ofjuridical
prescriptions and the obligations of foreign policy, the sooner his anny of
the revolution would become the national army of the future." (Ibid.) De-
spite everything, Hitler treated Roehm considerately.
Gisevius once again explains: "Hitler must take precautions on every
side. He is still only tl1e chancellor of a coalition government. He still has
to consider decisions of the Council of Ministers, diplomatic protests,
and even at times open resistance. Moreover tl1e old marshal is always
tl1ere." (Ibid.)
Roehm paid no heed to such considerations. If he accepted for the
moment the commanders of the old anny, he considered tl1em old fogies:
mwnmified skeletons with no social comprehension and an absolute lack
of feeling for the conunon people. For tl1em, a soldier was an instn1n1ent
that took orders, and that was all. In tlleir view, he was in essence an in-
ferior being. When so1neone like Gen. Reichenau, a convert to National
Socialism, allowed himself to talk to a soldier in a friendly way after drill,
or when he took part in con1petitive sports witll the men-where tlle best
man wins, not the one witll tl1e 1nost dazzling gold braid-it shocked his
fellow officers, who treated hi.tn as a de1nagogue.
The people's anny that Roehn1 wanted to give Gennany was a nation
in arms, as in the tilne of the French Revolution. Moreover, he often whis-
tled the Marseillaise, alluded to Carnot, and would have liked to give the
SA the spirit of the sansculottes.
He went too far. He evoked the Red Army. Driven as he was by an es-
sentially revolutionruy spirit, he would have liked to create a Gennan Red
Anny; for as he himself said, he was more socialist than nationalist. He
still agreed to tolerate maintenance of the army for the time being, on
condition that it be taken over without delay. In truth, he would have
n1uch preferred to create his Red Anny from scratch, thus ma.king a clean
break witl1 a past of landed squires, which seemed to him tenibly old-
fashioned. He also blamed the army-and, he was not entirely wrong-
for not having understood the imperatives of modern warfare during
World War i and in particular for rajecting the massive use of tanks. The
blindness of the Gennan general staff on that subject had unquestionably
been one of the decisive fact.ors in the defeat of the German empire.
Since then those generals, like their French counterparts, had grown
still more set on outmoded techniques, taking no interest in plans aimed
at tl1e fonnation of large annored units, nor in the creation of an air force
designed for massive military actions. Roehm's diatribe was valid per se
and would remain so right up to the end of World War II. In 1939, many
of tllose generals enmeshed in the past would still deny the tactical pos-
sibilities of arrnored divisions and take no more than a passing interest in
Goering's air fleet
Yet how would Roehm have been able to modernize a new anny from
top to bottom? A soldier of fortune who had never received the training
that might have fitted him for the job? Who didn't have the genius to in-
vent it and w~ ignorant even of tlle possibilities of a war industry? Hitler
would prove to be the one man capable of inventing a theory of modem
warfare from start t.o finish, one centered around the tactical collabora-
tion oflarge and powerful air and armored ground forces. He would have
the iron will to impose that strat.egic revolution. He would create the tank
divisions and the thousands of aircraft. He would have the flair for discov-
ering the imaginative young officera like Guderian and Rommel who
would apply his doctrine.
Hitler knew as well as Roehm that such a military revolution was in-
dispeffiable, but, aware of the obstacles, he didn't want to rush things. He
believed there was some possibility that the experienced commanders
of the Reichswehr would understand. He was mistaken about a number
of them. Bound up in their prajl.ldices, and behind the times, they would
not only completely fail to understand the new doctrine but would sabo-
tage it. In order to succeed in transfonning the military machine in spite
of tl1e obstacles and lack of comprehension, Hitler counted on a transfu-
sion of new blood into the anny, thanks to the National Socialist youth,
that would change minds and create thousands of officers who under-
stood and who would impart a true social cohesion to an army become
part of the greater German community. Alas, the time given him-the six
years from 1933 to 1939---would not be quite enough.
Hitler, even before 1933, had the long considered prudence of a re-
sponsible future head of state. Roehm, on the other hand, was impetuos-
ity personified and too violent in his talk when he had been drinking,
,vhich was often the case. An anny of the people? Both of them wanted
it, Hitler just as much as Roehm. But how t.o create it?
On tl1at tl1eir plans differed totally. Sooner or later they were bound to
clash. Roehm proclaimed, "I am the Scharnhorst of tlle new anny. The
stock itself must be revolutionary. It is impossible to graft ont.o dead
wood." The problem was much more complex than that
Hitler saw far beyond Roehm's mugs of beer. The anny he was think-
ing of would require something other than match sticks on a cafe table to
be invincible. In addition to the willingness, the strength and the faith of
the people, there would have to be cadres and brains, plans and a strategy.
The anny and tl1e SA were not to be in opposition to each other but to
form a double team. The problem to be solved lay there, not in a crazy
duel. The collision between Roehm and Hitler was inevitable.
Ernst Roehm was the leader of the NSDAP SA, or stormtrooper, units, and was the
leader of the •1ett• tendency within the National Socialist German Workers Party. In
the period leading up to Hitler's appointment as Reich Chancellor, and immediately af-
terward, the iett•-wing socialist and •right•-wing nationalist tendencies fought to drag
the party away from National Socialism and toward either reactionary monarchism or
Soviet-style Bolshevism. Roehm's death, for sexually perverse activities (he was a
homosexual and allegedly a pedophile as well), was part of this struggle for control of
German National Socialism. OEUTSCHES BUNDESARCHIV
CHAPTER
ROEHM CONTINUES TO PUSH
itler would be able to build a tn1e "popular anny" only on

a very s1nall scale at first, because the Reichswehr, terri-
bly jealous of its monopoly, would set up many obstacles
to its recruit1nent until 1941. In contrast to the recruit-
1nent of the throngs of the SA that Roehm, the adventur-
ous latter-day condottiere, had swept in after him much too fast and
without sufficient control, recruitment to the Waffen-SS would be phys-
ically, politically and morally the result of a long and rigid selection
process. It would be fonned of the best built, the most convinced and
the most disciplined young 1nen of the Reich, of those with the
strongest character, who had a crusader's faith in National Socialism,
in Hitler, their leader, in the nlission ofTeutonism and, after 1940, of the
Europe of the 20 comrade peoples who would be found in its ranks.
The schools of the Waffen-SS ("armed protective squadron") for train-
ing and for the fonning of their cadres would be of a Spartan severity.
Discipline was the fi.rst of its laws. A Trappist monk did not live more
soberly. An officer candidate would so1netimes lose a dozen kilograms
during his 10 months of instruction.
Thus in 10 years a n1illion young volunteers would be trained in a
Spartan manner: volunteers at first from Germany and then from tl1e
,vhole of Europe, all fanatic believers in a revolutionary faith and all
builders, as con1rades in arn1S, of a continent tl1at was at last to be one
politically, socially, economically, spiritually. Never before had anyone
ever seen-nor, beyond doubt, will anyone ever again see-a European
anny of a nrlllion young volunteers inspired by such an ideal, or repre-
senting such physical and n1oral worth.
But that Waffen-SS would be the 1naterialization of long years of
progre~ive toil, passing from a battalion to a regiment, then to three
divisions not very well armed, then to divisions quite formidably
equipped, tl1en to army corps and to armies. Tune would permit-as
under Napoleon-tl1e selection one by one, for their bravery and for
their competence, of tllousands of young officers of the very first order.
A good many of tllem for all that were ex-servicemen from 1918, be-
come young again among tlle young, like tlle unforgettable Sepp Diet-
rich, commander-in-chief of the Sixth SS Annored Army; like Gen.
Gilles, commander of the glorious Vikingn Division; like Felix Steiner,
commanding general of the Fourth Armored Corps; or like the grand-
father of the Waffen-SS, whom everyone affectionately called Papa
Hauser.
But the majority, who had come up from the Hitlerjugend (Hitler
Youtl1), or from similar organizations all over Europe, were magnificent
young men, like Kurt Meyer, the legendary "Panzermeyer," commander
at the age of 34 years of the 18,000 young lads of the Waffen-SS Division
Hitlerjugend; or like the dazzling Lohengrin, Joaquin Peiper, com-
mander of a tank regiment in the same division at the age of 29.
All of them without distinction had to submit preliminarily to the
same iron discipline, and to the same ideological education, earning
each of their promotions by their courage in combat and by their deci-
sivene~. I myself, commander at the age of 37 of the Waffen-SS divi-
sion Wallonia, then of the Army Corps Occident, had been a simple
soldier on tlle Ru~ian front for eight months, then corporal, then non-
commissioned officer, then second lieutenant, and so on, earning each
new rank "for an act of valor in combat." That was the hard and fast
rule in the Waffen-SS.
You went to the Tolz War School only after you had first given re-
peated proofs of your gift for command in becoming a noncorn at the
front, and had displayed bravery there by earning tlle Iron Cross. It was
comrades with the souls of leaders and heroes who were placed at the
head of the troops and not just those good at schoolwork, who were
the usual ones at the old military academies of the past. The soldiers
of the Waffen-SS also had to be men of a high moral standard. Approx-
ROEHM CONTINUES TO PUSH I 377
Ernst Roehm (center) and Hermann Goering (right) were two opposite poles of the Na-
tional Socialist movement, with Roehm leaning towards the interests of the workers
and Goering towards the interests of the nobility. These class interests had no place
within the National Socialist framework, which sought to unite all Germans.
imately 402,000 of the1n died in combat. They were the first every-
where, always at the hardest positions. The least fault, in the Waffen-
SS, was stringently punished. Stealing a knife would get you five
n1ontl1s in prison. A \Vaffen-SS n1an had to be pure and healthy. A re-
vealed ho1nosexual was shot before the entire troop.
Fanning an anny like that suddenly was not possible. The human
n1aterial available to Roelu11 was good for street fighting and for prop-
aganda But it was worthless for fonning a coherent army rapidly and
co1npletely, an anny 111odern and exen1plary in every way and co111-
n1anded by leaders of irreproachable 111oral fiber.
Roelun hhnself was a pack leader. Incapable of carrying out an ar-
duous n1ission requiring creativity, at the first test on the border, by
some ill-considered and tu1nultuous action, he would have turned tl1e
old Reichswehr into a chaotic anny heading ineluctably for disaster.
Hitler was farseeing, and he would one day have his "Red Army" thanks
to the Waffen-SS. But tl1at would co1ne only after years of cleverly side-
stepping a thousand traps without falling into one.
378 I HITLEH DEMOCH:\T
Roehn1, the mercemuy, was too 111uch in a hurry. He was becoming

annolred at the clevenless of tlle states1nan. In 1933 and 1934 his ini-
tatio~ would beco1ne progressively 1nore and more fraught with men-
ace. Their differences grew still n1ore serious from the fact that in the
sodoeconomic sphere, too, Roelun was totally reckless, a revolution-
ary with an unstable brain.
And there, too, Hitler would be a realist. He had understood per-
fectly that a synthesis of the economic interests of the Reich could be
accomplished only by respecting all the various components of the na-
tion. Capitalism was one of tl1em. Roehm wanted to crush it. Hitler did
not. He intended to base his revolution not on a vast social uproar by
disorderly masses, but on elites: political elites, social elites, cultural
elites, and the elites tl1at constantly renew the industrial world when
itis free.
A business leader is the product of a long selection. The rich man's
son, if he is intellectually limited, will be a failure in the modem world.
Industrialists and economists who can control the development of mar-
kets, rationalize production, coordinate their management and labor
teains, and open new paths for the production of goods are also elite
human beings, tileir minds always alert, aware of the risks they run but
possessing the force of character necessary to surmount them.
Hitler was bent on giving these very different elites a reasoned and
sincere social spirit and leading tilem to an effective conception of so-
ciety based on a hierarchy of merit. But he had no foolish wish to set
off charges of dynamite under employers of labor and creators of
wealtil who were as much a part of tile working world as a bricklayer
or a welder. Persecuting tile creators of employment, crushing them
under an uajust and irrational state control, economically torpedoing
their labors-that would weaken the Reich rather than cure it.
It would also make it impossible to eliminate unemployment. It
would end all possibility of strengthening and restoring the Reich-
swehr, which was still, in 1934, tile sole bulwark of the nation. There
was no other solution for tile moment but to maintain that bulwark,
however imperfect, however full of preconceived notions, however lit-
tle prepared mentally to transform itself strategically and technically,
if only so that it might be joined, after years of difficult preparation, to
an ideological army more dynamic and more reliable, the Waffen-SS,
the true "Grand Army" of Hitlerism.
ROEHM CONTINUES TO PUSH I 379
There would be evolution, not a blind smashing of everything. Hitler

bad hardly become chancellor when he declared: "I am resolved to sup-
press severely any endeavor which would tend to disturb the present
order. I shall oppose a second revolutionary wave with all my might,
because that would end in veritable chaos. Whosoever shall rise up
against the authority of the state will be arrested without regard to his
rank or his position in the party." (Benoist-Mechin, vol. III, p. 171.)
Revolution by violence was thus a closed chapter. "Revolution,"
Hitler had said, "is not a permanent state, and it must not become a
permanent state." "We have the task of attaining one position after an-
otl1er and little by little occupying each position in an exemplary fash-
ion."
And again: "The victorious German revolution has entered the evo-
lutionary stage, that is to say, the work of normal and legal reconstruc-
tion." He was fundamentally a pragmatist.
Others, like Roehm, bent upon reaching for the Moon, were not.
Hitler tried once more to warn them: "From now on any action that is
not in hannony witl1 the laws of the state will be suppressed severely
and without mercy, for the National Socialist state cannot tolerate any
private intervention in its sovereign domain, particularly in its public
jurisdiction." (Brissaud, p. 159.)
Roehm had bluntly taken a stand in direct opposition to the affirma-
tions of his leader: "We are not a bourgeois club but an association of
resolute political combatants. The revolutionary line will be main-
tained. I want to lead revolutionaries, not men who are pleasing to the
shopkeepers."
Hitler was detennined to be very patient in this instance as well. He
had always been patient. Roehm was a comrade of the early days. His
SA men for years had sacrificed themselves in his behalf. Despite their
excesses, he could not deny them his gratitude. Roehm's social threats
did not disturb him. There wasn't much he [Roehm] could do in that
area.
It was Hitler who was establishing relations with the industrial lead-
ers. On the military plane, however, it was a different story. A conflict
between the Reichswehr and the SA could be catastrophic for Ger-
many. And it was that conflict that Roehm was seeking with his series
of provocations.
Adolf Hitler and Ernst Roehm struggled together from the inception of the National So-
cialist struggle in 1919, though from 1925 through 1930 Roehm had retired from public
life and served as an advisor to the Bolivian military. His return to Germany in 1930 rein-
vigorated the SA corp, and he directed much of the uprising against Communism which
occurred from 1930 to 1933. Roehm was a homosexual, however, and his personal im-
morality was incompatible with the new Germany that Hitler sought to forge.
CHAPTER
THE ROEHM CRISIS WORSENS
dolf Hitler continued to hope that by temporizing, the Reich-

swehr and tl1e SA would balance each other off, the fonner
growing larger and more modern within its proper sphere-
tl1e militazy-and the latter acting with greater wisdom to
support tl1e political initiatives of the new govemmenL
Again and again the Fuehrer repeated: "The one sezves the nation,
whose territory it defends. The other is the instrument of the party, whose
ideas it protects. They fonn the two col~ upon which the Third Reich
rests." (Benoist-Medlin, op. cit., vol. ill, p. 177.)
Roeh1n owed everytlling to Hitler. Without Hitler, in 1921, he would
never have c01nn1anded a single SA unit If Hitler had not called him back
from South Ainerica in 1931, he would have continued on in Bolivia as
just another lieutenant colonel or colonel frequenting the cafes. Yet in
1934 he tl1ought hiinself to be a secular Saint Peter called to command by
the good Lord Hiinself.
"fll never go downhill again," he used to roar, haunted by the memory
of the coinedown t11at had previously taken him to South America among
those nilllions of 1nestizos, hi.tn, the racist He saw himself become a new
Carnot-nay, Napoleon Bonaparte. The Gennan anny would be his fief.
"All victorious revolutions based on an ideology must have their own
anny. You cannot conduct a revolutionary war with reactionary troops."
Hitler, who knew how to maneuver and diligently work his way
around obstacles to get safely to his goal, was getting on Roehm's nezves
and exasperating him. hl June of 1933, after finishing a subst.antial meal

at tlle fainous Ke1upinski Restaurant in Berlin, and having drunk too
nn1ch as usual, he had burst out: "Hitler is leading me around by the nose.
He'd ratller not rush things. He is betraying all of us. Now he's getting
chununy witll his generals." (Brissaud, op. cit., p. 156f.)
Then Roehm reproached Hitler with tlle supreme crime: "He is be-
conling a 1nan of the world. He has just ordered himself a black suit."
(Ibid.) In order to be a proletarian, Hitler should have received the diplo-
matic corps, or called on Marshal von Hindenburg, in a cap and overalls.
Bringing tlle Reichswehr to heel (and, above all, replacing it) was be-
coming a veritable obsession with Roehm: "I don't want a replastering
job done on the old imperial army. Are we or are we not making a revo-
lution? If we're making a revolution, something new has got to come out
of our momentum, something like the levee en masse of the French Rev-
olution. We do the same thing, or we're done for. The generals are old fo-
gies; the officers and tlle cadets mollycoddled at school don't know
anything but their old notebooks and their barracks. Enough of their rig-
marole. It's time we got rid of them." (Ibid.)
The trouble with Roehm was that those "old notebooks" had formed
indispensable specialists in an exact strategic science. And Roehm did
not possess that science. Nor did anyone in his entourage. To win inter-
national wars, or even to control a civil war, more is required tl1an just
being a valiant military hard case.
Moreover, there were rurnors circulating about Roehm with regard to
his morals, rumors of a very special nature that were readily exploitable
and being exploited. These days, being a homosexual no longer carries an
indelible stain. Eventually, homsexuals will be granted the right to a
legally authorized marriage. Some priests here and there even take the ini-
tiative and receive their cor\jugal vows in the name of the Father and the
Son and the Holy Spirit But in 1933, especially in the army, such ways
were viewed with extreme disfavor. An officer who was a homosexual
was inexorably cashiered.
Itso happened that some letters ofRoehm's hadjust been sold, letters
written to one of his partners, alluding to these rather special practices.
These letters left no room for doubt about the homosexual exploits of
the writer, who, it seemed, had put them into practice in the course of
his stay in Bolivia. These tropical distractions, transposed to a morally
strict GennanY, seemed at best in very bad taste. A valise was even fowld
THE ROEHM CRISIS WORSENS I 383
h1 Berlin that Roehn1 had left on the stairway of a house that openly spe-
cialized in such activities. The most serious thing was that Roehm had
gained adherents and that a few emulators had been found among his
inunediate coworkers.
Also very offensive were the acts of violence of so1ne of his leaders,
t11eir noisy drinking bouts, the luxury that several among them paraded,
their racing cars and stables. The wild and dissolute life of several of
tl1em, relatively young men, sometimes in their 30s, had attained the pro-
portions of a scandal.
Karl Ernst, the most notorious of the1n and one of the youngest gen-
erals of the SA, was spending more than 30,000 marks a month on ban-
quets alone (30 times a deputy's salary) from party funds. He had the
command in Berlin of 300,000 SA men, whereas in a normal anny he
would perhaps not have been the co1nmander of so much as a company,
or even a platoon. He pranced around on his horse in front of the troops
like a Napoleon entering Potsdam. He owned a dozen very expensive cars
and horses of the finest blood. He had the highest order of the Grand
Duchy of Coburg hung around his neck-by tl1e grand duke in person, a
relative of the king of Belgium.
EnlSt had previously been a traveling salesman. His fatl1er was ajan-
itor. His special morals, too, caused a lot of gossip. But he had been a
placard poster e1nelitus and an intrepid battler at a time when there were
only a handful of SA in Berlin. The dizzy rise of Hitler had canied hi.111
from a 1ninor local nlilitant to stupefying heights.
Hitler lrnew very well tl1at the corrupt little princelings of the SA
would have to be gotten rid of one day. But he was busy with extremely
harassing political and social duties. He was also afraid of upsetting many
naive 1nilitants by hasty expulsions and feared, too, that such nettleson1e
revelations might arouse the indignation of a public newly won over.
Emst's counterpart in Breslau, chief of police Heinz, was a boozing
parvenu of the saine stripe. He was young like Ernst, and like Ernst, he
had hundreds of thousands of men following his orders. He was flanked
by a whippersnapper of an assistant with a wiggly ru1np who never left
his side by so much as a foot, not even a foot of tl1e bed. "Made1noiselle
Schmidtn he was called, by all the chiers associates.
Just as with Ernst, it not only no longer even occurred to Heinz tl1at
without Hitler, he and his like would still be waiters or clerks; they both
thought tl1ey still hadn't received enough. Karl Ernst was very free in voic-
ing ~ insults against Hitler. He had uttered "unequivocal threats": "We

shall know how to keep Gennany fro1n going back to sleep again." Hitler,
still silent, had kept an eye on them for montllS. Their remarks were not.ed
down. Then an incident aggravated the distrust One day Hitler was about
to get in a car tllat was t.o take him t.o Karinhall, Goering's country estate.
Sensing, witll his special instinct, an impending danger, at the last mo-
ment he had changed cars, and Himmler had taken his place in the official
car tl1us abandoned.
While tl1at car was rolling down the highway to Stettin, a window was
shattered by a projectile that passed within a few centimeters of Himm-
ler's face. [Tile projectile was obviously intended for Hitler.] Himmler was
only slightly wounded, but the affair gave pause for thought Only some-
one very much up on tl1e Fuehrer's movements could have followed or
waited for the car with such painstaking precision. Who? And on whose
orders?
Ernst Roehm was less and less secretive about his plans: "Assault bat-
talions will become the praetorian guard of the revolution." (Brissaud,
Hitler et son temps, 167.) He would create "a sort of praet.orian and so-
cialist republic, an anti-bourgeois SA state in which the brown shirts,
whose number had not st.opped growing, would exercise power dictato-
rially." (Ibid., 195.) And this was only in June of 1933.
"At the very least," hist.orian Brissaud writes, "the camarilla gathered
around Roehm was methodically preparing the psychological conditions
for the proclamation of a 'second revolution.'" (Ibid., p. 196.)
With his cust.omary divination of peril, Hitler had charged his most
faithful disciple, Sepp Dietrich, with fonning, for his immediate protec-
tion, a special guard that would thereafter bear his name and that was
soon t.o be celebrated: the Leibstandarte-SS Adolf Hitler.
On July 1, 1933, Hitler once again warned the potential rebels, but this
time far more harshly: "I am resolved t.o put down without mercy any ac-
tivities which would tend t.o disturb the present order. I shall oppose any
second wave of revolution with all my energy, because that would end in
veritable chaos. Anyone at all who rises up against the authority of the
state will be arrested regardless of his rank or position in the party."
The threat was clearly meant for the people at the top. Ten days later,
on July 11, 1933, Mr. Frick, the minister of the interior, repeated the stem
warning:
THE ROEHM CRISIS WORSENS I 385
To talk of continuing the revolution, let alone carrying out a

second one, would be to compromise the legal and constructive
evolution desired by the Fuehrer. Such talk constitutes rebellion
against the Fuehrer, sabotage of the national revolution, and a fac•
tor of discord for the German economy which the government is
in the process of rebuilding successfully. Any attempt to sabotage
the revolution, and in particular any arbitracy interference with the
economy, will be severely repressed. National Socialist groups and
organizations must not arrogate to themselves powers which be-
long exclusively to the head of the government. (Benoist- Mechin,
op. cit., vol. m, p. 172.)
The next day Hitler returned personally to the charge: "'Ille revolution
is only a means of coming to power, not an end in itself. In any surgical
operation there comes a moment when you have to sew back up, or kill
the patient you intend to heal." Despite the fact that Roehm had been for-
bidden to increase the SA enrollment any further or to hold spectacular
public demonstrations without Hitler's presence, he insolently replied to
these orders by rallying 92,000 SA effectives at the Te1npelhof airfield as
if he himself were the true Fuehrer.
"Anyone who imagines," he cried, "that the work of the SA is finished
forgets that we are here and that we are going to stay here, come what
may. I will not t.olerate having the SA shoved aside under any pretext from
the objective it has been assigned." That bordered on rebellion. Already
several sections of the SA, stirred up by Roehm's appeals for a second
revolution, had earlier come close to mutiny. It had been necessary t.o
huniedly dissolve the1n. A decree of Aug. 25, 1933, had prohibited anyone
not holding a rank from bearing arms.
Roehm had been eager to respond and did so in November 1933.
Writes historian Jacques Bardoux in the Temps of Nov. 11, 1933:
To prove that he fears no one, Roehm concentrates in Breslau

the entire SA division of Silesia, c01nprising five brigades and 29
regiments amounting to a total of 83,600 men. Most of these units
have made marches of several days with all their equipment; and
the march•past itself lasts more than four hours. Led by Ober-
gruppenfuehrer Heinz, commandant of the area, the long brown
column passes in review before the chief of staff, Ernst Roehm.
h1 the lead, flags to the fore, co1ne a delegation of the Horst Wes-
sel B1igade of the Berlin-Brandenburg division and the nlilit:ary
staffsection of the Fifth B1igade ofStettin (Second District). Then
co1nes the cavalry regilnent of tl1e Silesian SA, followed finally
by 29 infant1y regunents and a 1notolized regilnent in five groups.
The defiance of Obergn1ppenfuehrer Heil1z, the co1nn1ander of the

Breslau n1arch-past, had known no bounds: "We are just beginning."
How was Hitler going to react? How? It is al.tnost unbelievable: by hav-
ing the would-be rebel beco1ne prut of his govenunent Hitler had dis-
cen1ed the plotting quite clearly. But in those n1onths of uncertainty he
could not and did not wish to upset the apple cart. The regilne was not yet
stabilized. The SA was not yet in a state to sw1nount a great crisis. The
Reichswehr on tl1e otl1er hru1d could not be sacrificed in order to comply
witl1 the edicts of n1udclleheads. To make an enen1y of tl1e army at a time
like this would be 1nadness. And if the Gennan anny and the SA were to
have at each other's throats, the otl1er nations would die laughing.
That being the case, why should not Hitler 1nake Roelun, the poacher,
into an official game warden? Being made part of tl1e adnlinistrative team
would no doubt satisfy his vanity: To be a Cabinet minister. The ex-cap-
tain \vitb a nose like a billiard ball would take a seat in tl1e chancellery.
And tl1en, Hitler told himself, if we put the two adversaries togetl1er on the
srune nlinisterial council, Gen. von Blomberg, rninister of tl1e Reichswehr,
and the commander-in-chief of tl1e SA, they will have no choice but to
rub shoulders with each other. They will be forced to understand ru1d
support one another.
That is a classic procedure tl1atjudges e1nploy with 1nanied couples
who want a divorce after a marital battle; or notaries witl1 clients who
are wrangling over divergent concerns.
But witl1 Roehm, a nlinisterial portfolio was not enough. Besides, in
his own way he was an idealist and little ilnpressed by favors. In any
event, it was a stranglehold on the anny that he meant to have, complete
authority over the ministry that controlled tl1e Reichswehr. He accepted
the appointment haugl1tily on Dec. 1, 1933, in fact almost scornfully. He
announced to one and all that he would not even take up residence in
Berlin as his functions would oblige him to do. He said he would continue
to live in Munich, far from the government he was nevertheless hence-
forth to be part of officially. He insisted that his subordinates address hint
THE ROEHM CRISIS \VORSENS I 387
not as 1ninister but as chief of staff. Just as before.

Instead of being glad at the possibility of an approach t.o the minister
of national defense, he made it a point t.o affront him in the course of the
rare government meetings he attended. He did not wish t.o conciliate him,
but to throw him out, him and his accursed Reichswehr. The most he
would consider-and that only provisorily-was that the SA enter the
Reichswehr in force, with each unit strictly maintaining its own authority
and all of his princelings keeping the inflated rank they held in the SA for-
mations. The 30-year-old brigade leaders and division leaders would au-
to1natically be the equals of superior officers who had exercised
high-level co1nmands during or after World War I and had spent a quarter
of a century or more obtaining their red collars.
TI1at seems allnost insane, but the fonner traveling salesmen or clerks,
like En1st or Heinz, who had not spent a single day in barracks, even as
orderlies, intended in an instant to beco1ne the equals of the military com-
manders of the old Reichswehr. It was evident, moreover, that not a single
one of the1n would consider having anyone but Roehm, whose strategic
competence was virtually nil, become their Reichswehr minister or chief
of staff, as he de111anded.
The reaction of Minister-General von Blomberg was sensible. He did
not run down the SA, but militarily he knew its limits, which were indeed
evident to tl1e eyes of any specialist who was even slightly informed.
The brown-shirt anny is at the very most an anny for civil war.
It would not be capable of waging victoriously a foreign war. The
Reichswehr will never enroll units of the SA en bloc, nor will it rec-
ognize the ranks achieved in the stonn troops. Anybody who wants
to enter the army must come here individually and begin at the
lowest echelon in the hierarchy. To act otherwise would be t.o shat-
ter completely the unity of the army. (Bardoux, ibid., 176.)
Hitler thought the san1e way, not just by personal conviction, but be-
cause he was objective. "Placing the commander of the SA at the head of
the army would have 1neant disavowing the political ideas I have followed
for more than 14 years. Even in 1923 I proposed a former officer (Gen.
Erich Ludendorft) to command the arnzy and not the man who tl1en con1-
manded the stonn troopers [Goering]." (Bardoux, ibid.)
When France, convinced of Hitler's imminent fall, was preparing to
break off all negotiations witl\ tl,e Reich, how could he lend himself to any
such suicidal merger?
His conciliatory gesture vis-a-vis Roehm had thus seived no purpose.
Sooner or later Hitler would have to put an end to his extravagant ambi-
tions. "Personal feelings," Gen. von Seeckt had written, "must never play
any role in comparison witl1 reasons of state." (Von Seeckt, Gedanken
eines Sol,daten, p. 191.)
Roehm was raging, railing at the "bourgeois club," spewing out his ha-
tred of the whole capitalist system that Hitler at that very moment was be-
ginning to whip into shape, and thanks to which the latter had already
sent nearly 3 million unemployed back to work and obtained the applica-
tion of refonns which were completely ameliorating the physical and
moral situation of the proletariat On Feb. 22, 1934, in a speech to the SA
leaders ofThuringia, Roehm went so far as to proclaim that the accession
of Hitler to power had been "only a snack": "The National Socialist revo-
lution imposes new tasks on us, great and important tasks, beyond every-
thing thus far obtained."
"The revolutionary elan of the SA will put an end to 'the stagnation
and the spirit of the shopkeeper.'" (Brissaud, op. cit., p. 177.) The shop-
keeper in point, it was well understood, was Hitler. "If [he] does not
agree," Roehm added, "I will forge ahead, and millions of men will fol-
low me. We'll have to eliminate Hitler, put him under lock and key."
(Ibid., pp. 183f.)
"The revolt that is rumbling more and more in the ranks of the SA," his-
torian Benoist-Mechin obseives, "may very well become explosive at any
moment Settling the SA problem is the absolute No. 1 priority." From
then on, Roehm, for all intents and purposes, was just a rebel. Either he
would promptly use his bomb, or Hitler would set it off in his hands. A
soft leader would allow himself to be surprised. There was notlling soft
about Hitler, as Roehm was soon to learn.
CHAPTER
THE lAST MllllMETERS OF THE FUSE
'th the ill will of other countries on the increase, the .

need for Gern1any to create compact annored units
was urgent In fact, Adolf Hitler had finished explaining
to the cominanders of tl1e old anny that their n1ost im-
n1ediate mission would be not only to beef up their
contingents, but to inaugurate new tactics by motorizing their forces.
On the subject of Ernst Roehm, however, Hitler remained circum-
spect with one and all: "We have to let the matter work itself out"
That didn't 1uean Hitler would fail to take precautions. But now that
trouble at meetings was a thing of the past and complete quiet reigned in
tl1e streets, keeping 3 million SA effectives mobilized no longer made any
sense. A half or a third that 111any men would more than suffice to handle
whatever political threat nlight still arise. TI1at immense and idle anny
was now only an instnunent of pressure by a few petty chieftains who
were overly runbitious or who had lost their heads. In his heart Hitler had
made tlle decision: He was going to radically reduce tl1e nwnber of the SA
effectives, who had become useless and dangerous besides. Moreover,
tl1at would be a 1neaI1S of calntlng a certain an1ount of the uneasiness that
had arisen in other countries, where the existence of the SA had caused
apprehension in the public mind. We know that on Feb. 21, 1934, Hitler
had announced to Mr. Anthony Eden of Britain that he was going to re-
duce the SA by two-thirds, thus by about 2 nilllion men.
Those remaining would be no more tl1an a simple politico-civil organ-
ization "witl1out nlilitary duties of any kind." Mr. Doumergue had arro-
gantly ~ected tl1ose pledges made by Hitler. And Roehm had been yet
n1ore arrogant tluu1 President Doumergue. With that proposal of Hitler's
goven1ment, Roehm saw himself on tl1e point of being stripped at any
n101uentoftwo-tllirds of his cohorts, who would then be further reduced
to a troop e1uasculated not just numerically but weapons-wise, since in
the future tlley would be less well armed tllan tile municipal guards.
Roehm had not waited more tl1an 24 hours before pouring out his fury:
The SA fonn an W1Shakable bastion raised against reaction,

the petit bourgeois and the hypocrites, for they embody evecy-
tlling represented by the idea of revolution. From the very first
day, the fighter in the brown shirt has marched on the road that
leads to revolution, and he will not move aside from that road by
so much as a foot." (Brissaud, op. cit., pp. 189f.)
And again:
The new Gennan regime, manifesting an incomprehensible

indulgence, is not ruthlessly sweeping away the supports and the
henchmen of the old regime.... "Peace" and "order"-those are
their passwords. And in that spirit they meet with all levels and
all factions of the hidebound bourgeoisie. (Ibid.)
"Reaction and revolution," he shouted, "are mortal enemies! There is

no bridge that can be laid between them! The one excludes the other!"
(Ibid.)
For fonn's sake, Roehm had made reference still to fidelity to Hitler.
But what imaginable fidelity could there be after such a rejection? Roehm
had definitely cro~d the Rubicon even if he did not understand what
that historic rebellion signified. Roehm had not in fact waited for this oc-
casion to start his counterthrust. For weeks the Schleicher-Strasser-
Roehm plot had been a reality. Loose talk and bragging had already made
it lmown to the state police. The participation of the French ambassador
in their intrigues was known. His visits and meetings with the apprentice
conspirators were followed. Roehm had increased the importance of his
forces as much as possible. He had created his own totally independent
political service and public relations service.
THE LAST MILLIMETERS OF THE FUSE I 391
"He organized a new series of immense processions and tried in gen-

eral to demonstrate by unintem1pted triumphant parades that the forces
of tl1e SA were intact At the same time he had procured fairly large quan-
tities of arms, in part by purchases abroad." (Fest, op. cit., p. 92.) Anns
for what? Against whom? Against the army? Against Hitler? If not, against
whom, then?
"It is undeniable that these activities were resented by Hitler and by
tJ1e military leaders as a provocation. The Reichswehr chiefs appeared
more openly in public." (Ibid.) "Roehm is losing out," Gen. Werner von
Blomberg concluded laconically. "His account will soon be settled."
For their part, Roehm's men were ready. We read in Benoist-Mechin:
Three groups exist at this time among the commandants of

the SA. First a little "camarilla" gathered around Roelun consist-
ing of the most powerful generals of the brown shirt anny and
bound together by shared ambition and morals. Then a certain
number of commanders who have no allegiance to this coterie
but who continue to obey Roehm out of a spirit of discipline. Fi-
nally, a few commanders ousted from the High Command who
are disturbed by Roehm's plans. (Hist.oire de fArmee Allemand,
vol. m, pp. 180 ff.)
Some of them were already taking action. Benoist-Mechin continues:
Emboldened by the cynical declarations and the bad example

of their commanders, small groups of SA members begin here and
there to engage in acts of violence. In the latter days of May, squads
of brown shirts ransack the big Kaarstadt stores in Hamburg, and
the police have to intervene to reestablish order. Scenes of the
same sort take place in Frankfurt and Dresden. At Munich, where
spirits are running especially high, guards of the General Staff are
wandering the streets and singing revolutionary verses. One of
them has this significant verse for its refrain: "Sharpen your long
knives on the edge of the sidewalk." (Ibid.)
It went far beyond that: "They do not hesitate to proclaim that the sec-
ond revolution is close at hand, that the day it begins they will settle their
accounts with all their enemies, and that that will be the start of carnage
:W2 I HITLER DEMOCRAT
such as Gennany has never seen." (Ibid.) This tune the Reich was on the
tllreshold of all-out, bloody civil war.
Hitler would make one last atte1npt. On June 4, 1934, he su1nmoned
Roelun to the chancellery and for five hours hanunered away, tlying to
convince him. Hitler himself has related how hard he tried. "I acljured
him: Strive against all that folly to avoid a catastrophe. It was h1 vain. The
discussion lasted f11titlessly until nlidnight." Hitler did not fail either to tell
Roelun what he could expect if he persevered in his senseless plan: "I will
personally-and hnmediately-smash any atte1npt that 1night plunge
Gennany back into anarchy; anyone who attacks tl1e ad1ninistration must
be prepared to number it among his enenlies." (Benoist-Mecl1in, op. cit.,
p. 18'2.) Roehn1 left tlle chancellery cursing and would not be seen there
ever again.
He understands that he will never win Hitler over to his views. He
makes a show of yielding to tile Fuehrer's adn1onishments. But he imme-
diately fonns a second plan, wllich he c01rununicates to the members of
his entourage. The SA will shortly launch a sudden attack in Berlin and
occupy the nlinisterial buildings by surprise. Hitler will be itnprisoned
first thing and put in solitary confinement. ... The plan is irrunediately
adopted by tlle "camarilla" Hayn in Saxony and Heinz in Silesia sound out
tl1e police to learn how they will react. (Ibid.)
The plot, if we are to believe the co1nmunication of the French ambas-
sador to his govenunent, would have gone beyond just arresting the
Fuehrer: his arrest would have been followed by his physical liquidation.
One other fact is conclusive: With an eye to the operation, Roelun
had put together a secret fund of 12 million marks. The fact is formally
confirmed by Benoist-Mechin: "A war chest of 12 1nillion marks had
been collected" (Ibid. )-a fantastic sum for those ti1nes. Before the de-
cisive elections of March of 1933 assured Hitler the vote, giving him ple-
nacy powers, Dr. Hjalmar H.G. Schacht had invited the 12 most
important businessmen of Germany to a 1neeting and had afterward col-
lected, in his hat, checks amounting to 3 1nillion marks. That su1n had
seived to finance the great election campaigns not only of Hitler's party,
but of the so-called national parties of Alfred Hugenberg, Franz von
Papen and associates. On the day of tl1e vote there were still 600,000
marks in the treasury that had not been spent.
In other words, the 12 million marks secretly collected by Roehm
through pressure on financial circles represented a subversive force
THE LAST MILUMETERS OF THE FUSE I 393
Here, Adolf Hitler salutes marching SA men as their commander Ernst Roehm stands
watching in the background. The two are riding in one of the famous Mercedes autos
that was provided to the National Socialist German leadership.
whose like no group in Gennany had ever before possessed.

Acting with t11e greatest urgency, Hitler decided on Jm1e 6, 1934, to
send the entire SA on vacation for a rnontl1. That would perhaps still give
hin1 time to find a c01npr01nise solution. At the same tiine, it would give
proof to the other countlies Umt Hitler's government did not need the 3
nlillion SA to stay in power or 1naintain public order, since Hitler would
be able to dispense with the1n quite readily for an entire n1onth.
'l\vo days later, on June 8, 1934, Roehm reacted with unconcealed
anger: ''The enenlies of the SA will receive the answer they deserve at the
right ti.Ine and in the mruu1er of our choosing. If our enemies believe that
the SA will not retun1 fro1n their leave, or will return only partially, they
are 1nistaken. The SA are ru1d will remain the n1asters of Gem1any's des-
tiny." (Benoist-Medlin, o]). cit., p. 183.) One could hardly ruu1otmce more
deliberately U1at there would soon be a settling of accotmts.
Asignificru1t detail: at a time when every cornrntmication made to the
SA was i.nvruiably ended witl1 tJ1e prescribed "Heil Hitler," this time the
salute was onlitted, as if the F\1elu-er had already ceased to ex.isl Speak-
ing of this plot, tl1at people after 1945 were pleased to depict as "an imag-
inacy plot of course," the Hitler sco1ners have since tl1en had to pull in
their honlS a biL Fonner police officer Gisevius, a fanatical anti-Hitlerite,
was forced to acknowledge:
There is indubitably s01ne trutl1 in the stocy of tl1e putsch. First

of all, everyone can smell tl1at "second revolution" there is so
much talk about. The SA are sharpening tl1eir daggers, though
they aren't tl1e only ones. Sooner or later Roehm is going to strike
by the sheer force of circwnstances. In the second place, it is ve1y
possible tl1at he and Gen. Kurt von Schleicher have sometlling
cooked up between them. There surely must have been some
cynical words said in tlle course of the evening passed in the com-
pany of Fram;ois-Poncet.
The French historian Andre Brissaud, also no Nazi, has asked himself
tlle question again and again: "Did Roehm really have any plans for a
putsch?" His answer: "It is impossible to rule out tl1e possibility." In vain
he has tried to find some document or otller in the archives of Nuremberg
that would make it possible to deny the plot "The criminal case concern-
ing the affair of the Night of the Long Knives, which took place from the
6th to the 14th of May of 1954 at Munich, and which I attended, shed no
light on this important poinL"
"The commander of the SA," he adds, "was no plaster saint, and it is
possible if not probable that at this important turning point in his political
rise, Roehm once again followed his natural bent, which was to risk his
destiny in conspiracy and revolutionacy combat." (Andre Brissaud, Hiller
et son temps.) "At the very least," Brissaud adds, "the camarilla gathered
around Roehm was preparing the psychological conditions for proclaim-
ing a second revolution." (Ibid.)
Roehm's aim is no longer contested. Even by Brissaud.
He acknowledged:
There is every reason to believe that Roehm was dallying

with plans which, had they been successful, would have brought
about the elimination of the Fuehrer rather quickly. Many histo-
rians wishing to paint Hitler blacker than he was in the affair
have applied too much whitewash to Roehm . . . What Roehm
wanted was a sort of praetorian socialist republic, an SA anti-
THE LAST MILLIMETERS OFTIIE FUSE I 395
bourgeois state in which the brown shirts, whose numbers had

never ceased to increase, would exercise power directly. The
Hitler-Roelun conflict was a very deep-seated one. And Roehm's
repeated challenges, the demonstrations of force by the SA, and
the threats made by their leader, were certainly indicative of a
will to action tl1at must have seemed to the wary old birds on
the overcrowded general staff like plans for a putsch. Sharpen
Your Long Knives is certainly a song of the SA. (Andre Bris-
saud, Hitler et son temps.)
We lmow how after World War II the whole Roehm affair was twisted
and presented to the public in detective serial fashion as a base squaring
of accounts between the bloodthirsty Hitler and an SA commander of
,vhom he was jealous. The most stupid kind of tittle-tattle has been pre-
sented as solid fact. But today tl1e truth is not even debatable any longer.
It has been established not on the basis of ludicrous bunkum, but on of-
ficial documents and historical testimony. Roehm was in a state of rebel-
lion. His bully boys were ready for anything. To overthrow Hitler. To
imprison him. To assassinate him. Gen. Schleicher, for his part, had de-
cided to make Roehm and Gregor Strasser the two leading lights of his
coming government The French ambassador, M. Fran~ois Poncet, was in
frequent contact with the future putschists and kept his government ac-
curately infonned about them. His ntllitary attache, Gen. Renqudot, an-
nom1ced in his final report that "a bloody conflict is inevitable."
A strange malaise was sensed everywhere. "Things are going badly,"
Marshal von Hindenburg growled. He had called Hitler to his summer
residence at Neudeck. "It is high time you put your house in a little order.
Get rid of the troublemakers who are compromising the National Social-
ist regilne."
The explosive's last nlillhneters of fuse were btuning. The bomb could
go off at any tilne. Who would be first to throw it, Hitler or Roelun? "We
have to act," Hitler said at last "We have to strike, and strike fast"
During the Night of the long Knives, also known as Operation Hummingbird, the National
Socialist German leadership assassinated a group of both right• and left•wing political oir
ponents who had been planning an armed uprising and coup against Hitler's govern•
menL Among those dead was Gregor Strasser, leader of the radical •1ett" tendency of
the National Socialist German Workers Party, and former chancellors Kurt von Schleicher
and Gustav Ritter von Kahr. Roehm became implicated in this plot and was executed
by Hitler, who later stated Roehm had been executed by mistake. NEWSCOM
CHAPTER
THE NIGHT OF THE LONG KNIVES
man who had not yet appeared openly in the Roehm-

Schleicher-Strasser affair was Vice Chancellor Franz von
Papen. Von Papen had been placed in this position close to
Adolf Hitler by Oskar von Hindenburg on Jan. 30, 1933, to
keep an eye on the Fuehrer, and after three months he was
already hardly more than a vaguely recognized supernumerary in the
chancellery. He was morose. That Hitler fellow, who was gaining an ever-
greater following, was getting on his neIVes. It init.ated him. No one had
ever followed hiin. In 1932, in the Reichst.ag, he had been whipped by a
vote of no confidence, with 96 percent of the parliamentary vote lined up
against him. Impeccable in his cutaway and top hat, but, still, what did he
amount to?
On June 14, 1934, Hitler had gone to Italy for his first visit with Mus-
solini. Papen, who was not brave by nature, was going to take advantage
of this absence of his chief executive to make a speech against him three
days after his departure which would be a rather pedantic match for the
twisted intrigues and the delusions of his former friend, then ex-friend,
then new friend, Gen. Kurt von Schleicher. The speech that Papen was
going to make was not his own. A "ghost" had written it for him. His name
was Edgard Jung, and his anti-Hitler writings were going to cost him rather
dearly. Papen had chosen the town of Fulda, an old ecclesiastical metrop-
olis, for pulling off his coup. The text that Jung had given him was almost
laughably exaggerated, particularly inasmuch as it was supposedly written
:}98 I IIITLEH DEMOCHAT
by a 1nan who, while occupying the Reich's chancellorship before Hitler,

had proved hilnself incapable of acco1nplishing anything at all.
That he, whose political past had been a cipher, should pretend to give
lessons to someone who had just put 1nore than two 1nillion of Gen11any's
une1nployed back to work in only a few 1nonths was utterly presumptuous.
Papen spelled out his prefablicated pages at Marburg with the convic-
tion of a statio1unaster: "Gennany n1ust not be a train launched haphaz-
ardly into tl1e future, with nobody knowing where it will stop. ... Great
1nen are not created by propaganda, but by the valor of their actions and
tl1ejudginentofhistocy.... A defective or half-educated intelligence does
not qualify one to engage in a battle against the spirit." But the bishops,
chrunpions in all types of political quan·els, and wl1ose spokes1nan Papen
had hoped to be that day, had i.tmnediately fallen silent, 1niters inclined
n1eekly over their breviaries.
Bnuung, the ex-chancellor, realizing that Papen's speech had 1nisfired
and s1uelled of heresy, would clear out that very week and n1ake tracks
for the Ainericas. When Hitler had deplaned on his retun1 fro1n Venice, he
,vould n1ake it his business to reply. After having read a report of the
speech written by Papen's ghostwriter, Hitler 1noved to deal witl1 his very
strange colleague, who had tl1ought he was being so clever.
A few hours after landing, Hitler challenged him syinbolically from
tJ1e rostn1m at a public meeting at Gera in Thuringia: "All these little
midgets who in1agi11e they have son1etlling to say will be swept away by
tl1e po,ver of our idea of tl1e conununity. Because, whatever ctiticisms
they believe tl1emselves capable offonnulating, all tJ1ese midgets forget
one tiling: where is this better tiling tl1at could replace what is? Where
do they keep whatever it is ti1ey want to put in its place? Ridiculous, this
little worm who wants to combat such a powerful renewal of a people."
(Andre BI'i$aud, Hitler et son temps, p. 197.)
Schleicher, who had been delighted by Papen's sabotage, was just put-
ti.t1g the final t.ouches on his future govenunent. TI1e list was al.ready 1nak-
ing the rounds: Everyone's role was already fixed, as we 1nay read in
Benoist-Mechin: "Hitler will be assassinated. Schleicher will beco1ne
chancellor in his place. Gregor Strasser will receive the portfolio of na-
tional economy. As for E1nst Roehm, he will beco1ne nlinister of the Re-
ichswehr."
"It is fitting," Schleicher says, "that tl1e army and tl1e national fom1a-
tions be in the same hands." Strasser and Roelun having approved his
THE NlGMTOFTHE LONG KNIVES I 399
progrrun, Schleicher felt assured of success. (Benoist-Mechin, Hist.oire

de l'A1mee Allemande, Vol. III, p. 189.)
And so a general who was choking with ambition, a general who six
n1onths earlier, as 1ninister of national defense, was directly responsible
for the Reichswehr, was now determined to place all the generals of the
Reichswehr, his own colleagues, under the command of Roehm, the con-
stru1t insulter of the old anny. Resentment had turned him into a traitor,
this swaggering, cynical man. The thirst for power was consuming him
,vith fury, and he was ready to ally himself with anyone to regain it.
Harshly, historian Benoist-Mechin writes: "He considers that the hour has
come to make s01neone pay for his disgrace. A general without an anny,
a fascist without conviction, and a socialist without any support among
the working class, in losing his Cabinet post he has lost his friends. But
now that events seem to be turning in his favor, he sees the possibility of
getting it all back with a single blow.11 ( op. cit., vol. m, pp. 188f.)
Rtm1ors leaked out concen1ing the still semi-secret crisis, causing
frightened reactions. On June 25 of 1934, Hitler was infonned that in 15
days the gold reserves of the Reichsbank had dwindled from 925 million
marks to 150 million. "The agitation of the SA has caused disquiet in in-
dustrial and banking circles."
Everything tallied: the anny threatened; anarchy on the horizon; the
specter of devaluation hru1ging over the Reich. Hitler's lieutenants raised
their voices. Rudolf Hess on June 26, 1934, announced on the radio at
Cologne: "The Fuehrer will pardon minor personal deviations considering
the magnitude of tl1e achieve1nents made. But if the party is obliged to
join battle, it will do so according to the National Socialist principle: if
you sttike, sttike hard."
"National Socialistn crumot be replaced," he added, "not by hand-
picked conservative forces nor by criminal intrigues given the pompous
naine of 'second revolution.' Adolf Hitler is, and remains, a revolutionary
in the grand style. He has no need of crutches." Hennann Goering w~
just as flnn at Hainburg, on June 28: "Pulling a people out of the mire to
raise it toward the Sun is a superhuman task. The basis on which the
Reich rests is confidence in tl1e Fuehrer." Then his warning sounded like
the crack of a rifle: "Whoever seeks to destroy that confidence has signed
his death warrant. 11
More and more precise infonnation was brought to Hitler, some of it
real and son1e no doubt exaggerated by uneasy inlaginings or understood
only n1ore or les.5 exactly by the listening services. These transcriptions

of wiretapped telephone conversations of the conspirators were full of
~ insults directed at Hitler. Secret agents followed the suspects. Let-
ters were seized as well, very accusing letters. Goering was most im-
pressed by tJ1e documents.
"Feverish preparations are also being made in the National Socialist
camp. The black militia are in a state of alert A certain number of SS sec-
tions are anned witl1 rifles and 120 cartridges per rifle. The shock troops
known as tlle SS Section Grossbeeren are on a war footing. Certain for•
nlations of tlle automobile corps, or NSKK, are mobilized and armed with
carbines." (Account of the events of June 30 from The Manchester
Guardian of the following Aug. 9.)
It is June 28, 1934: Hitler has left for Essen, where he has to attend a
wedding and to meet some big industrialists in the field of metallurgy. On
the following day, June 29, 1934, he will inspect the Labor Service camps
in Westphalia. Then, out of tlle blue, he is going to receive news of the
most alanning nature: "Roehm has given orders to all the SA commanders
to join him on the shores of the Tegernsee [Lake Tegem] on the afternoon
of June 30, and all units of the SA have received orders to remain at the
disposal of their commanders." (Benoist-Mechin, op. cit., vol. I, p. 192.)
Now, tlle next day, the first ofJuly, is precisely the day when the leave
decreed by Hitler for the 3 million men of the SA is to begin. Hitler himself
has given us an account of these particularly dramatic hours:
"The mobilization of the SA on the eve of their departure on leave
seemed to me very unusual. I decided therefore to relieve the chief of
staff of his duties on Saturday, June 30; to put him under close arrest until
further orders; and to eliminate a certain number of SA commanders
whose criminal activities were notorious.
"Given the tenseness of events, I thought that the chief of staff would
probably not obey me if I ordered him to Berlin or elsewhere. I conse-
quently resolved to go myself to the conference of the commanders of
the SA Relying on my personal authority and on the decisiveness tl1at
had never failed me in critical moments, I planned to arrive there on Sat-
urday at noon, to dismiss the chief of staff on the spot, to arrest the p1in-
cipal instigators of the plot, and to address a rousing appeal to tl1e
commandants of the SA to recall them to their duties." (Cited by Benoist-
Mechin, ap. cit., voL IlI, p. 192.)
Hitler has just ended his Westphalia visit among the young workers.
THE NIGHT OF THE LONG KNIVES I 401
He has arrived to spend the night at a hotel he is fond of, the ho1ne of an
old comrade, Herr Dreesen. Fro1n his balcony he looks out over a beau-
tiful stretch of the Rhine. As if the heavens wish t.o join in his personal
drama, a storm, thunderclaps and flashes of lightning bwst in a veritable
Wagnerian hunicane. Goebbels has come at 9:30 p.m. in a special plane
from Berlin to bring him other messages that have come in hour by hour
to increase the disquiet
"The alert has been given in the capital for the following day at 4 p.m.
Trucks have been requisitioned t.o transport the shock troops; the action
will begin at 5 p.m. sharp with the sudden occupation of the ministerial
buildings." (Benoist-Mechin, op. cit., p. 194.)
There is no tune to sift through each of the reports, t.o weigh which are
true and which fraudulent or imaginary. "fve had enough of this." Hitler
cries. "It was imperative t.o act witl1 lightning speed. Only a swift and sud-
den intervention was perhaps still capable of stemming the revolt There
was no room for doubt here: it would be better t.o kill 100 conspirators
than to let 10,000 innocent SA men and 10,000 equally innocent civilians
kill each otl1er." (Ibid.)
Hitler reflects for several minutes. All the others around him remain
silent Dealing severely with old comrades from tl1e early fighting days is
rending his feelings. "I was filled with respectful admiration," Paul Joseph
Goebbels will later relate, "a witness to that silence, for that man upon
whom rested the responsibility for the fate of millions of human beings
and who1n I saw in tl1e process of weighing a painful choice. On the one
hand the peace and tranquillity of Germany, on the otl1er those men who
up to now had been his intilnate friends." (Bli$aud, op. cit., p. 201.)
"However far tl1ey've gone astray, they are fighting comrades. For years
tiley have shared the same anxieties, tile same hopes, and it is with horror
that he finds hiinself forced to be severe with tl1em." (Ibid.)
"It caused me a great deal of pain," Hitler adlnitted. But when it is nec-
essary, a leader must rise above his attachments. Hitler is going t.o antic-
ipate tl1e meeting called by Roehn1 and get there before anyone else. He
,vill not saddle anyone else with tile dangerous mission. He will go him-
self. Six persons in all will accompany him, with Goebbels sticldng close
t.o his chief.
At Godesberg, Hitler's personal plane is damaged. Happily for him be-
cause at tile Munich airfield tl1ey were lying in wait for his plane. A re-
place1nent Junkers is brought out, and tl1ey climb into tl1e black sky still
marked by the storm. Hitler does not say a word during the two hours in
the air. Will he still be alive this very evening? He is an old soldier, and he
will hurl himself straight at the obstacle, as he did at the front in Flanders
and at Artois. He still had time before the plane took off to receive a tele-
phone mes.5age from the gauleiter of Munich, Wagner: "11:45 p.m. Several
hundred SA men have gone through the streets shouting abusive slogans
against Hitler and the Reichswehr and chanting their song: 'Sharpen your
long knives on the edge of the sidewalk'."
Leaping hastily from his Junkers at Munich, Hitler immediately goes
up to the two SA generals there to meet Roehm in the afternoon and tears
the silver leaves from their collars. hnrnediately afterward he sets off by
car for the village of Wiessee, where Roehm is staying. With him in the car
are Goebbels, Otto Diet.rich-his press attache-and three bodyguards.
A truck carrying some SS men overtakes them on the way. "Mein
Fuehrer," Goebbels says, "the one who strikes first holds the winning
hand. The first round in a fight is always decisive.,, To strike before any-
one else is precisely what Hitler has in mind. As a true fighter, he is going
to pounce.
The tension between Hitler and Roehm had been building for quite a
while. At last it was to reach its deadly climax on June 30, 1934. Adolf
Hitler is first to leap from the car onto the porch of the Hanselbauer
boardinghouse, where Ernst Roehm and his staff are sleeping. It will only
take a few seconds from start to finish. The entry door is sent flying. Hitler
rushes in. Goebbels and the few SS of the escort run from room to room
and burst in before a single sleeper can budge. And what sleepers. The
most inveterate of Roehm's accomplices, Heinz, who had paraded with
him so arrogantly at Breslau just a while ago leading nearly 100,000 SS
members, is still sleeping, stark naked, clinging to his chauffeur. He tries
to seize a revolver, is dumbfounded. It has been Hitler's wish that he arrest
Roehm personally.
"Alone and without any weapons," wrote Churchill admiringly, "Hitler
mounted the staircase and entered Roehm's room." (Churchill, L'orage ap-
proche ["The Stonn Approaches"], p. 100.) Roehm's face turned crimson
at the sight of Hitler, his features still more marked by the drinking bout of
the previous night He was dragged outside and shoved into a truck with
several other swvivors. Hitler turned away from him as though dismayed.
Suddenly then, there appeared a series of cars arriving at Wiessee with
a first lot of the principal SA commanders coming to Roehm's meeting.
THE NIGHT OF THE LONG KNIVES 403
Hitler rushed into the road, stopped the vehicles and then personally ar-
rested those of the leaders whose complicity was known to him He knew
precisely who Roehm's confederates were and who were the ones not
infonned, and the latter were released immediately. The others soon
found themselves in the Munich prison. Benoist-Medlin has revealed:
These latter had intended to let the other officers in on their

plans during the course of the Wiessee conference, thus con-
fronting them with afait accompli, since the action was to begin
at almost the same time in Berlin and in Munich. Those who
could not be won over to Roehm's side would have been arrested
and handed over to the commando shock troops. (Benoist-
Mechin, op. cit., vol. ill, p. 197.)
It is not hard to guess what the commandos would have done with
them.
Just at that moment (at 7:45 am.) the commando shock troops espe-
cially created by Roehm were also arriving, transported by a column of
trucks. That irruption of commandos at such an early morning hour was
revealing. If the shock troops were getting here that early, it could only
mean they had received orders at dawn for the very special rni.s.sion that
Roehm intended to assign them. And for the second time it was the
Fuehrer himself who then and tl1ere went to inteIVene.
"Hitler, still without weapons, advances toward the detachment com-
mander and orders him, in a tone brooldng no answer, to tum around
and go back to his quarters. The detachment commander complies, and
the column of trucks goes off back in the direction of Munich." (Ibid.)
Thus at every stage it was Hitler who braved the risks and put his own
life on the line. Churchill has written: "If Hitler had arrived an hour later,
or tlle others an hour sooner, history would have taken a different tum."
(Churchill, op. cit., pp. l00f.)
Otl1er SA bigwigs were due to arrive in Munich by train. The moment
they got off, they were arrested one after the other right at the station.
When Hitler got back to the "Brown House" at 11 o'clock in the morning,
he had the list of prisoners sent to him immediately. There were 200. He
himself checked off on the sheet the names of the leaders most impli-
cated, to be shot. Not tl1ere either did he try to saddle someone else with
the decision and the execution order. He took his responsibilities to his
countey very seriously. Churchill hilnself would be obliged to recognize

tile fact: "By his prompt and rutluess action he had ensured his position
and no doubt saved his life. That 'Night of the Long Knives,' as it was
called, had preseived the unity of National Socialist Gennany." (Ibid.)
The aften1oon of tJ1at srune day, tl1e SA co1nmanders checked off on the
list ,vere brought to face firing squads. "It is the will of the Fuehrer. Heil
Hitle,1 Ready. Ahn. Fire!"
That took place at exactly 5 o'clock in tl1e afternoon, the hour when
those executed would prestunably have ended their 1neeting with Roehm.
And Roelun? He was still alive. Hitler was still hesitating "because of
selVices rendered." It was not until tl1e next day that Hitler, n1astering his
personal feelings and bitten1ess, would accept, at Goe1ing's insistence,
that tl1e chief culprit finally be executed.
At that mon1ent Hitler declared that it would be necessary to let
Roelun carry out his own execution. A revolver was placed within reach
of his hand. He refused to touch it Ten nlinutes later a burst of machine-
gun fire killed hiin in his cell. Hitler, tnte to his fliends to an ahuost im-
possible degree, received the news witl1 dis1nay. "When a young SS officer
hands Hitler a n1essage telling hin1 that Roeh1n has rejected suicide and
has been killed, Hitler's face grows very pale. He puts the message in his
pocket A fe,v nlinutes later he withdraws to hls apaitment "(Brissaud, op.
cit., p. 210.) Hitler had an iron fist. But he couldn't bring hin1Self to use it
on an old comrade.
Hitler had returned to Berlin by 6 o'clock in the eveniI1g of tl1e saine
day. He had landed at Tempelhof witl1out a hat, "his face as white as chalk,
fatigued by a night without sleep, unshaven, offering his hand in silence to
those who were waiting for lwn." Goering presented hi1n witl1 a list; at
Berlin, too, the repression had been swift a11d severe, harsher than at Mu•
nich. The civilians implicated had been executed at the saine time as the
SA commanders linked to Roehn1 and to Gen. Kurt von Schleicher. From
the moment of receiving the watchword "hmruningbird" at dawn, a col·
umn of mobile guards hadjoined Goering's personal guard. Goering, like
Hitler, had made them a brief speech: "It will be necessaiy to obey witl1out
question and to have courage, for putting s01neone to death is hard."
In a flash the comrnandeis who were u1 league witl1 Roelun a11d Schle-
icher were arrested and lined up against a wall at tl1e Lichterfelde prison.
And here, too, it was the chief who 1nade tl1e decisions. One by one, Go-
ering looked each prisoner mthe face. Tllis one. That one. As at Munich,
he personally and on tl1e spot stripped those most deeply involved of their
rank before their execution. Gisevius, tllough a most notorious anti-Hit-
lerite, has felt it necessary to make mention of the confessions of tlle
guilty: "Uhl is tl1e one who affirmed, a little while before he was shot,
tl1at he had been designated to assassinate Hitler; Balding, one of the sec-
tion conunanders of tl1e SA, that he would have made an attempt against
[Heinrich) Hhnmler." Ernst, tl1e boozer witll a dozen cars, who spent
30,000 1narks per month on banquets, had been seized at the very moment
,vhen he was about to leave for the Canaries. Hardly more tllan a few
hours, and it was all over.
Those mentioned were not tlle only ones to perish. At Berlin, the po-
litical center of all tl1ese intrigues, various important civilians had been
nlixed up in tl1e affair. First there had been Vice Chancellor Franz von
Papen, the sly sche1ner. That morning his arrogance rapidly diminished.
Goering had personally treated him witll consideration. They were col-
leagues. Papen was still vice chancellor.
"I very strongly advise you," Goering told him, "to stay at home and not
to go out for any reason." He had immediately understood and scurried
away to safety. He would stay buried at ho1ne without giving a moment's
tl1ought to his close colleagues sitting in his ministrY, even those who had
prepared for hiln the malicious text of his speech at Marburg prior to
Roehm's operation.
As for what nlight happen to them as soon as he abandoned them at
the vice-chancellery, he would pay no heed. Afterward he would never
ask for a word of explanation concerning them, nor would he express a
single regret They would die that morning nevertheless. His right-hand
man, Erich Klausene1; had tried to flee and had been killed by two bullets
fired tlu·ough his half-open door. He had wanted, on leaving, to get his
hat, and that had 111ade hiJn lose the few fatal seconds. He died witll his
hat on like a conscientious citizen.
Papen1s own private secretary, Herbert von Bose, would fall right in
the Cabinet building. Edgard Jung, Papen's chief writer, tlle one who had
drafted his tirade of June 17 word for word, would be 1nowed downjust
like the two others. Thus, after having been abandoned heroically by
Papen, tl1e first clique was done away with.
Next it would be the tum of tl1e Schleicher-Roehm government's fu-
ture 1ninister of industiy, Gregor Strasser. He had llidden in a factory that
made phannaceutical products. He was caught there, and he was not long
in being liquidated. And what of the most important of tl1e plotters, the fu-
ture chancellor of post-Hitler Gennany, Gen. Schleicher? He had been
tl1e first to pay. He had not even had tiine to seek a refuge. He had been
surprised in his office and shot down dead before he could utter a cry. His
,vife, ,vho had flung herself upon him, had died bravely under the same
hail of bullets.
Always when such things happen, over-excitable people go too far or
indulge their darker instincts, and in tlle violence of the brawl, some in-
nocent people did get hurt. These casualties are what today we chastely
call "regrettable mistakes." More tl1an one occurred on June 30, 1934. A
peaceable profes.5or named Schmit was confused with one of the con-
spirators of the SA: they both bore the same surname and first name. [Ac-
cording to William Schirer in The Rise and Fall of the Third Reich, the
innocent man was Dr. Willi Schmid. The local SA leader was named Willi
Sclunidt. SA leader Willi Schmidt had in the meantime been arrested by
another SS detachment and shot-Ed.]
Victim of another mistake was an old and good friend of Hitler's, Fa-
ther Schlemper, a former Jesuit. In the heat of such operations, where
for an hour perhaps public tranquillity is at stake, errors and excesses do
talce place: they are regrettable, condemnable and, no matter what one
does, inevitable.
In August and September of 1944, one Charles de Gaulle would sho,v
very little concern when his partisan thugs, with abominable refine-
ments of crueltY, assassinated tens of tllousands of Frenclunen (104,000
according to official U.S. figures) quite simply because their ideas of
what was good for France differed fro1n his. And among all the killers
of 1944, Communist and Gaullist alike, not a single one, not even of
those caught red-handed in the worst excesses, would ever be the ob-
ject of sanction. The same is true of Belgium, where the assassins who
freely massacred, in isolated villages, hundreds of parents and children
of the Volunteers of the Eastern Front, would without exception ertjoy
tot.al immunity from punishment in 1945; indeed, they would receive
pensions, would be decorated.
If Hitler was forced to act severely on June 30, 1934, he had brought
humelf to it not a moment too soon. He might easily have been forestalled
that day by the Roehms and the Schleichers. His indecision during May
and June very nearly proved fatal. From the moment he became aware
that mistakes or abuses had been committed, he took action witl1 equal
severity against tl1e police or 1nilitiarnen who had committed them. Three
such were shot that srune evening. "I shall order punishment," he ex-
claiined, "for those who have committed excesses. I most emphatically
forbid any new acts of repression."
In his book, The St,o1m Approaches, Churchill would make it a point
of honor to repeat-almost witl1 admiration-the reasons tllat obtained
witl1 Hitler when he saw there was no other solution but to crush tlle im-
nlinent rebellion: "It was imperative to act with lightning speed at that
n1ost decisive of all hours, because I [Hitler] had only a few men with
n1e... . Revolts are always put down by iron laws that are ever the same."
Churchill, in a similar case-one may be sure-would certainly have re-
acted with a harshness one hundred times more implacable.
How many dead were there? There, as in everything else when it
comes down to rapping Hitler, the figures t.ossed out have been prodi-
gious. A tl1ousand dead according to some. More than a thousru1d dead
according to others. "The estimates as t.o the number of persons liqui-
dated vacy fro1n 5,000 to 7,000 persons," Churchill would later write, as
if ashamed of having 1nore or less praised Hitler for his energy.
What is the evidence to support such claims? None. These fantastic
figures were tl1rown int.o the air to chill the blood of the great public out-
side of Gem1any. For tl1e wam1ongering press that had been howling at
Hitler's heels for neru·ly two years, it offered a great opportunity t.o heap
opprobrium upon llin1, albeit with a shameless disregard of truth or even
probability. That rneU1od of provocation, repeated at every tum from Jan-
uacy of 1933 on, was infallibly conducive t.o the furious hatreds that de-
generated into World War II in 1939.
If we stick honestly to the histo1ically established exact figures, how
many plotters or confederates fell on June 30, 1934? Seventy-seven in all,
Hitler affumed to the Reichstag. Even an enemy as impassioned as Gise-
vius, the ex-Gestapo men1ber, had t.o admit, doubtless unwillingly: "If we
are to believe the rumors, there were supposedly more than 100 men shot
on that Sunday alone at Lichterfeld. But that figure is certainly exagger-
ated; in all probability there were no more than 40."(Gisevius, op. cit.,
196.) Well, there was no other day of execution but "that Sunday." Reca-
pitulating all the nan1es he was able to collect tl1roughout the entire
Reich, Gisevius arrived at 90 men executed. Moreover, he further adds:
"supposing the figure to be exact." (Ibid.)
And the other 910 ... or 6,830 ... whose execution was tn.unpeted
arotu1d tlle planet by tlle Churchills or junior Churchills? Gisevius, who

,vas on tlle spot and had anti-Nazi informers all about, didn't arrive at a
hundredth of Churchill's figure, and he had only this pitiful explanation to
offer: "Tilose who had been listed as dead turned up again at the end of
a few weeks."
h1 a fe,v hours, and at a price that when all is said and done was not
very high-about one deatl1 per million Gennan citizens-Hitler had re-
stored order to his country.
"Never was a revolution less costly and less bloody," Goebbels would
be able to say.
The anguished screams and the lies of foreign critics were the most ar-
rant hypocrisy. What did the swift execution of a handful of mutineers
on tlle verge of rebellion amount to alongside the wholesale slaughter
perpetrated by the so-glorified grand ancetres of the French Revolution?
Napoleon himself had Gen. Malet shot for conspiracy. The Due
d'Enghien was killed at his order in the ditches of Vincennes. He exter-
minated tens of thousands of Breton opponents in his punitive expedi-
tions. "A political act is notjudged by the victims it makes but by the evils
it averts." It was the philosopher Joseph de Maistre who said that, a cen-
tury and a half before Roehm and Schleicher were executed. With unde-
niable personal courage, Hitler had been able to control the situation at
limited cost and in a minimum of time.
It cannot be doubted that without his resolution, Germany would have
fallen into chaos, and rapidly. The army would certainly have moved to
block Roehm, resulting perhaps in tllousands of deaths and an immediate
collapse of the economic recovery. The shouts of triumph that went up
abroad to see this brief outburst of violence taking place in Germany were
vecy significant; one would imagine they were already sounding the mort.
It was not only Hitler's right but his duty to take the red-hot iron from
his forge and cauterize the canker to the bone. He did so with the force
and the promptness that were needed to spare the nation anytlling be-
yond the swift and radical elimination of the corruption. He was the judge
and the sword. A true leader in such hours of extreme peril must face up
to things, not hesitate a second, but decide and act.
The German people understood as much even that same evening.
When Hitler, his face ashen after such a tragic event, left the Tempelhof
airfield at six o'clock in the evening, a group of slaters working there on
a roof let out a shout: "Bravo, Adolf." In their admiration they called him
by his first name. Twice more they shouted their "Bravo, Adolf." It was the
first salute of the people on the return of the lover of justice.
A few hours later, another "Bravo, Adolf," was going to ring out, this
one still more impressive than the bravo of the slaters; it was that of the
highest authority of the Reich, old Marshal von Hindenburg. That same
evening he had telegraphed the Fuehrer from his Neudeck estate, "It ap-
pears from reports given me that you have crushed all the seditious in-
trigues and attempted treason. Thanks to your personal, energetic and
courageous inteivention, you have saved the Gennan people from a grave
peril. Let me express to you my profound gratitude and sincere esteem.
Signed: von Hindenburg."
Freed of the threat of a fratricidal subversion, the army, too, at once
fell in line unanimously behind the chancellor. As soon as von Hinden-
burg's 1nessage reached Berlin, the minister of national defense issued
an order of the day to the Wehnnacht:
The Fuehrer has personally attacked and crushed the rebels

and traitors with the decisiveness of a soldier and with exemplary
courage. The Reichswehr, as the only armed force of the nation
as a whole, while remaining aloof from internal conflicts, will ex-
press to him its recognition of his devotion and fidelity. The
Fuehrer asks us to maintain cordial relations with the new SA.
Aware that we seive a common ideal, we shall be happy to do so.
The state of alert is lifted throughout the entire Reich. -Signed:
von Blomberg
And the SA? No single act of resistance or complicity would be noted

anywhere in the entire Reich after June 30, 1934. For almost all the SA
members, it was Hitler who counted, not the men shot.
The latter had been six or seven dozen all told and were either coldly
ambitious, like Schleicher, or else leftist adventurers like Roehm, as well
as a few accomplices whose heads had been turned by their unwonted
rise and who clamored for still more. "After all," Gisevius would acknowl-
edge, dealing them the unkindest cut of all, "it was only a matter there of
a very tiny clique: group staff officers with their paid guards, a bunch of
hoodlwns such as are to be found anywhere there's disorder or a row."
(Gisevius, op. cit., vol. I, p. 132.) The bulk of the SA would not have let
themselves be led disastrously astray.
The French runb3$8dor, Fraiu;ois-Poncet, Schleicher's ru1d Roelm1's

old friend, would later write: "Even if Roehn1 and Schleicher had been
able to carry out tlleir plot, they would have failed." Their revolt would
have ended in a bloody n,assacre probably a htu1dred tilnes 1nore n1urder-
ous U,an tl,e brief repression of June 30. They had not even been able to
act in good tune. Gisevius would add: "The history of June 30 con1es
down to the choice oftl1e opportune n1on1ent. Roelun fell because he let
tl1e favorable hour slip by. The Goeling-Hirnmler terun (and Hitler, of
course) won because it acted at the proper tilne."
Karl Marx had said it a century earlier: "Neither nations nor won1en
are spared when they are not on tl1eir guard." Hitler had been on his
guard. \Vitl1 black humor, Goering remarked: "They prepared a second
revolution for the evening of June 30, but we made it instead-and
against then1."
Hitler was hardly more tl1an awake tl1e next morning, the first of July,
1934, when continuous cheering rose up fro1n below the windows of the
chru1cellery. Gisevius, who at tl1at tin1e was not yet secretly betraying tlte
Nazi regiine, was in the chancellery when Hitler drew near to tl1e balcony.
"On this occasion," he later noted, "I had an unexpected opportunity 1n
see Hitler up close. He was at the frunous window and had just received
tl1e ovation of the people of Berlin who had come there in throngs."
He n1ade a deep bow when Hitler passed in front of him, but he was
conswned with fear. "Under the insistence of that caesar-like gaze, I al-
most wanted 1n crawl into a hole." (Gisevius, op. cit., p. 68.) The caesar
of the chancellery had shown guts and a sense of strategy, and the people
massed in tlle street below cheering hitn, with a sure intuition of the dan-
ger and the successful outcome, had understood.
By July 2, 1934, tl1e whole of Gennany was back on track. The SA and
the anny were reconciled. The political and social reunification of the
Reich had been achieved in 1933. Now, at the beginning of July of 1934,
military and ideological reunification were about to be realized.
Pledges of loyalty 1n Hitler were contlng from all sides. Even the high
clergy sanctimoniously followed suit. Dr. Hjalmar H.G. Schacht himself
found no grounds for reproach. No more than a few days after tl1e exe-
cutions he would calmly enter the Hitler govem1nent, now purged of
Roehrn's presence.
On July 13, 1934, speaking before the Reichstag, witll tl1e Gennan na-
tion glued 1n its radios, Hitler assumed full responsibility for his actions:
TME NIGHT OF THE LONG KNIVES I 411
The guilty paid a very heavy tribute: Nineteen superior offi-

cers of the SA and 31 SA commanders and members of the
brown-shirt militia were shot; three SS commanders and civil-
ians implicated in the plot suffered the same fate; 13 SA com-
manders and civilians lost their lives resisting arrest; three
others co1runitted suicide; five party members no longer belong-
ing to the SA were also shot Three SS men who had been guilty
of mistreating prisoners were shot.
If anybody blames me for not having referred the guilty to the
regular courts, I can only reply: It was only by decimating them
that order was restored in the rebel divisions. I personally gave
the order to shoot the guilty. I also gave orders to take a red-hot
iron to tJ1e wound and burn to the flesh every abscess infecting
our internal life and poisoning our relations with other countries.
And I ftuther gave the order to shoot down immediately any rebel
who made the least atte1npt to resist arrest In that hour I was re-
sponsible for the fate of the Gennan nation, and I was thereby
the supre1ue judge of the Gennan people.
If there was still a saboteur re1uaining in the shadows, Hitler was bent
on warning him that a fate like that of Schleicher and Roehm awaited
hint: "Any show of a plot, or co1uplicity in a plot, will be smashed without
any regard for rank or person."
Believing that Hitler was going to be overthrown, the warmongers
abroad-notably French Council President Doumergue, the vindictive
and authoritarian little old Proven~-rejoiced too soon.
It was Domnergue who would be ousted from power, rejected by the
French people that same year, while out of the tragedy of June 30, 1934
had come a stronger Gennany, freed of all threat of internal subversion
and with tl1e anny and the SA finally brought into mutual hannony. Polit-
ically, socially, militarily and ideologically, the Genuans were now a
united people.
The following 1nonth, by casting tens of millions of votes in favor of
Hitler for the third time, Germany was going to make known t.o the whole
,vorld that she was forming around her leader the most fonnidable unity
the Reich had ever known.
This artist's conception of Hitler and Hlndenberg is based upon a Life magazine photo
of an actual public handshake that symbolized the transfer of power from the German
old guard to the new, rising forces of German National Socialism. LIFE MAGAZINE
CHAPTER
ALANDLSIDE VICTORY FOR HITLER
y extraordinary luck-tl1e luck tJ1at had long watched over

his life like a star-Adolf Hitler had been able to employ his
lancet at the proper ti.Ine; for exactly, two months and two
days after the Ernst Roehm affair, old Marshal Oskar von
Hindenburg, 87 years of age, was going to die. A delay of
three months, and Hitler would have been right in the middle of the civil
brawl at the very tilne of the succession. Every effort would then have
been made by the anny, by the reactionaries of the Henrmclub, and by
otl1er capitalist cabals to impose as Hindenburg's successor so1ne conser-
vative, preferably a son of Wilhehn II, who would have restored the old
imperial syste1n of pre-1918.
Hitler, who in his first months as chancellor had already had to put up
with the supervision of the aged Hindenburg, a man not always easy to live
with, would then have seen some socially hidebound prince or other set
over him, someone wrapped up in the vainglory of his position, a copy of
Victor Enunanuel of Italy hanging like a lead millstone around Mussolini's
neck since the March on Rome of Oct 28, 1922. Mussolini made a mistake
that day when he didn't tell the ridiculous dwaif, who was notable only for
the plume which doubled his height, to go jump in the 1iber. Three-fourths
of Mussolini's potential would be stifled by that pon1pous dynastic sterility,
encwnbered as it was with stuffed-shirt dignitaries bespangled with hon-
orary decorations, and where feminine grace was represented only by titled
and wizened old dowagers decked out in gleaming finery.
Hitler ,vottld never have tolerated such a pretentious and soul-destroy-

ing circus. The 1nopping up of June 30, 1934 had rid him of the palace
plotters. All of them, since that date, had curled back up in their empty
shells. As for von Papen, shunted aside and out of the government, he
,vas eager to find son1e employn1ent or other, even modest employment,
in Hitler's seIVice. Later he would be delighted, at the mere beckoning of
a finger, to accept being sent like a diplo1natic me~nger boy to Vienna,
tl1en to Ankara. The public had already forgotten Hugenberg. As for
Schacht, he had triumphantly taken a seat in the Fuehrer's Cabinet while
tl1e sn1ell of gunpowder in the ministerial offices was still making people
sneeze. After two years of eager collaboration Schacht had been able to
find his niche. He had earned his pro-Hitler enthusiasm to the point where
he had a fabulous gold hooked cross mounted as a sparkling jewel set in
rubies made for his wife. For a time he would keep quiet.
Hindenburg had been pleased at the restoration of order of Jm1e 30.
TI1e "Bohemian corporal" was a thing of the past He held Hitler in real es-
teem now.
In July the marshal had begun his final struggle. It was certain that his
death would cause a very great shock in Germany. Right up to his last
days, he had steered the ship of the Reich with firmness. He had passed
roaring cataracts: World War I, the defeat, the 15 years of failure of the
Weimar Republic. When the marshal was about to enter the shadows of
senility, Hitler had pulled himself aboard in his small boat. The marshal
had believed at first that Hitler was going to make them capsize, but then
he had seen that he dominated and was master of the violent course of
the waters, and that the old historic flag so dear to him was waving anew
atop the mast
Hindenburg became sentimentally attached to Hitler. The latter had
hastened to his bedside when he lay dying. Hindenburg, no longer able to
recognize faces, mistook Hitler for his ex-emperor, who had been chop-
ping wood in Holland for more than 16 years. The flame of life still trem-
bled on for yet a few hours. In the silence of dawn on Aug. 2, 1934, it
flickered out
Hitler did not lose an instant. There, too, as on June 30, he was going
to forestall any intrigues. One scarcely had time t.o wonder who was going
t.o succeed the glorious deceased when, just a few hours after his death,
the Reichsgesetzb!,att published the text of a law that cut short all vain
speculation:
A LANDSLIDE VICTORY FOR HITLER I 415
The duties of the president of the Reich are combined with

those of the chancellor of the Reich. In consequence, all the
powers and prerogatives of the president are transferred to the
Fuehrer and chancellor, Hitler. He will designate his own repre-
sentative. -Berlin, the 1st of August, 1934. Ad. Hitler, Rudolf
Hess, von Papen, von Neurath, Dr. Frick, Count Schwerin von
Krosigk, Franz Seldte, Dr. Gurtner, von Blomberg, von Eltz, Wal-
ter Darre, Dr. Goebbels, Hermann Goering, Dr. Rust, Hjalmar
Schacht
It was signed by the 15 members of the government, including the
Conservatives selected in January 1933 as prison-guards for Hitler, Baron
von Neurath, Count Schwerin, von Krosigk, and even the devious von
Papen, despite the fact that he was no longer a minister except theoreti-
cally, having in fact been ousted from the Council after the failed putsch.
These worthy civilians in their pin-striped trousers, so standoffish the
previous year, were now only too anxious to please. As for the wearers
of another kind of trousers with a pwple stripe, the Reichswehr top brass,
they would have been able to erect a very fonnidable barricade on the
road to succession if Hitler had not put a radical end to Reichswehr-SA
conflict on June 30, 1934, and recognized the former as the exclusive
anned forces.
Thus recognized, the Reichswehr from that day on had seemingly
thrown in its lot with the Fuehrer without reserve. On Aug. 2, 1934, proof
would be given of the soundness of Hitler's political instincts and of his
tactical skill. Without the preceding 30th of June, the triumph of Aug. 2
would doubtless not have been possible. On that day the top generals of
the army, Reichswehr Minister Gen. von Blomberg, the army chief of
staff, Gen. von Fritsch, and the chief of naval operations, Adm. Raeder,
,vere the very first to come and pay homage to Hitler and tender him an
oath of allegiance much stricter than that which had bound them t.o Hin-
denburg as head of the state. For this tiine it was to Hitler personally that
they had then and there to take an oath of loyalty:
I solemnly swear before God in all circumstances to obey
Adolf Hitler, Fuehrer of the Reich and of the Gennan people,
supreme commander of the armed forces. I pledge myself to act
at all times as a brave soldier and to respect this oath even at the
risk of my life.
416 I HITI.EU DEMOCRAT
On the sruue nto111ing throughout Gennany, 100,000 Reichswehr offi-

cers, nonconunissioned officers and soldiers repeated that srune oath
with great cere1nony. Front then on the conunander of tlte rumy, the sole
conunander, was Hitler. The anny that was acting distn1stfully a fe,v
1nontlts earlier, would fro1n that day forward be under the orders of "the
Fuehrer of tl1e Reich and of tl1e Gem1an people" who had beco1ne tlleir
conunander-in-chief. Every general would have to struld at attention be-
fore tlte Austrian ex-corporal. Said Gen. von Reichenau in a statement to
tl1e Petit Journal of Paris on Aug. 6, 1934:
The chancellor kept his word by nipping in the bud Roehm's

attempt to n1erge tlte SA with the Reichswehr. We love him be-
cattse he has truly conducted himself like a soldier. The rumy ad-
mires hint for his personal courage, and I wholly subscribe to tlte
words he uttered the other day: "The anny can trust in me as I
trust in tlte amty." (Andre 81issaud, Hiller et son Temps, 218.)
In 17 months, Hitler, who had not even been a Gennan citizen three
years before, had become the sole master of the anny, as well as of Ger-
many. Hitler, a stage-manager in the style of Wagner, organized a funeral
for Hindenburg such as no emperor had known in the Reich in the course
of 1,000 years. The marshal was going to be buried in the heart of a mon-
un1ent like an enonnous fortress whose eight 1nassive granite towers
would rise in the middle of the battlefield where, on Aug. 29, 1914, Hin-
denburg had cn1Shed the Russian invasion at Tannenberg. Here a fe,v
Gem1an divisions had gotten the better of several hundred thousand
Slavs, who were hurled back in panic in the Masurian Lakes, where tl1ey
surrendered en masse while their co1nmander-in-chief, Gen. Srunsonov,
conunitted suicide. Sixty-seven million Gennans listened spellbound, by
radio, to the description of the long veils of crepe falling from the towers,
of the coffin placed in the center of the great lawn, the hundreds of glo-
rious banners watching over him. His oldest co1nrades of the Great War,
led by Marshal von Mackensen, imposing in his tall, Uhlan Guard shapka,
fonned a square about the deceased.
Hitler advanced to face the corpse and saluted the hero who was en-
tering on immortality: "Dead marshal, enter now Valhalla." Everyone
held his breath. Some officers came forward, hoisted the heavy coffin
to their shoulders while the March of the Dead Warriors from tl1e Twi-
light of the Gods was resounding like a long, smothered sigh. At the mo-
ment when the recu1nbent body was deposited in the Tower of the Mar-
shals, the booming of 101 cannon shots shook the plain, the lakes and
the woods and reverberated to the furthermost villages of the Reich,
carried via radio.
Hitler, with imposing solemnity, had been at that moment the con-
science of the nation saluting greatness. Hitler was and always had been
anxious to act only with the consent and approval of the people: that is
tl1e historical trutl1. He wanted the people to ratify this increase in his
power and to grant it to hiln in their tum. For the second time in le$ than
eight months, he was going to trust his fate to a plebiscite in which the
people would let him know their will. Already on the day before that bur-
ial wortl1y of ancient Rome or the return of Napoleon's ashes, Hitler had
charged his minister of the Interior with the arranging of that national
consultation:
It is 1ny wish that the constitutional decision taken by the Cab-

inet to confer upon my person the offices exercised by the de-
ceased president of the Reich, receives the explicit sanction of
the Gennan people.
Profoundly convinced that all sovereignty emanates from the
people and 1nust be confirmed by the people by means of a free
and secret vote, I ask you to make the necessary arrangements to
subnlit the decision of the Cabinet to the German people, so that
tl1ey may pronounce on it by a referendum vote.
Whoever wished to vote would vote as he wished according to his

convictions and preferences. At the rune of the first plebiscite, in Decem-
ber 1933, it was still possible to affinn that Hitler had won it because he
had based the electoral consultation on a problem of foreign policy, a
subject on which the nearly unanilnous agree1nent of the Germans was
admitted in advance.
This tune, on Aug. 19, 1934, it was no longer the League of Nations or
disannament the people would be pronouncing on: it would be on Hitler
himself, on the increased authority that had been definitely granted him,
uniting in the same hands the powers of the chancellor of the Reich and
those of the chief of state that Hindenburg had exercised previously.
One could still wonder whether that extension of Hitler's power would
have been approved by the deceased, whether he feared it or would have

encouraged it. It was whispered tl1at no testament of the marshal's ex-
isted. In any case tl1e government lmew nothing of it An official state1nent
fron1 the chancellor's office even let it be Imown following the interment
tl1at "Marshal Hindenburg has left no political testament." But one did
exist not only a personal letter from Hindenburg to Hitler, but a message
of seven pages preceded by a dozen noble lines in the marshal's own
handwriting. The marshal had even made several alterations in the text.
It ended with the holographic signature of Hindenburg written in the pres-
ence of his privat.e advisors.
On the envelope the old man had written beautifully the following
poignant note:
This is my testament to the German people and to their chan-

cellor; this letter is to be transmitted by my son to the chancellor
of the Reich. I give thanks to Providence for letting me be wit-
ness, in the evening of my life, to the hour of our national re-
covery. I thank all those who have contributed with a
disinterested love of the fatherland to setting Germany right
again. My Chancellor Adolf Hitler and his movement have taken
a decisive step of far-reaching historical consequence in restor-
ing unity to the German people without distinction either of
class or profession. I know that much remains to be done. And
I wish with all my heart that the great act of national resurrec-
tion and unification of the people may be crowned with a recon-
ciliation that will embrace the entire German fatherland.
What was most extraordinary, however, was that Hitler, even though
chancellor, had remained ignorant of the existence of this testament for
13 days; in fact, he had believed there was no testament right up to the
moment, on Aug. 15, 1934, when the text was made known to tl1e German
people.
The marshal's son, Col Oskar von Hindenburg-who at the beginning
of January 1933 was still a professed adversary of Hitler's-had not
wished to reveal the testament to the public and provoke possible violent
debate before the emotion of the great man's passing had abated some-
what He made an effort to explain over the radio to all of Germany:
My father himself, now deceased, saw in Adolf Hitler his im-

mediate successor as supreme head of the Gennan empire. I am
thus obeying the desire of my honored father when I urge every
man and won1an of Gennany, in the referendum of Aug. 19, to
ratify the transfer of all the powers and prerogatives previously
exercised by him to the person of the Fuehrer and chancellor of
the Reich.
On the very eve of the vote, the dethroned Kaiser's eldest son, whom
the monarchists had hoped would succeed Hindenburg at the head of the
Reich, came before the microphones and, to the swprise of many people,
announced his adherence to the man that had been considered his rival:
"I, too, shall vote for Adolf Hitler," tl1e crown prince declared.
Nonetheless, various considerations could still swing the vote the
other way. The monarchists still contrived to hang on to their illusions.
Moreover, although half of the unemployment problem had been solved
at tl1at date, August of 1934, Gennany still counted 3 million men out of
work who, when casting their ballots, might be seized by discouragement
or irritation.
Finally, and above all, there was the immense anny of the SA to think
of. In confonnity with his written promise to Secretary Anthony Eden of
England, Hitler had just finished eliminating more than 2 million members
and had then disallowed the remaining members the right to bear anns.
So there, too, with that recent grievance preying on them, the SA mem-
bers nligl1t vote "against" in protest.. TI1e death of Roehm was also quite
recent; approving Hitler with one's vote was equivalent to frankly approv-
ing Roehrn's liquidation.
Unyielding monarchists, unemployed workers, SA men demobilized
against tl1eir will-wouldn't tl1ey vote "no" either by tradition, or from
rancor or aversion?
All those reactions were possible. Moreover, that was partly the case.
In certain f01mer bastions of the Comnnmists in Berlin, tl1e "nos" reached
30 percent of the vote; and in Breslau, Luebeck, Aachen, and Hamburg,
nearly 25 percent. Proof, for a third tin1e in less tl1an two years, that any-
one in Gennany who wanted to vote against Hitler could do so freely and
secretly. Yes, about 4 million Gennans, making full use of their rigl1ts as
voters, did indicate their opposition to tl1e leader of National Socialisn1 by
their negative votes, while 38,362,690 otl1ers, that is to say 88.9 percent of
420 I Hn'LER DEMOCRAT
tl1e electorate, accorded the Fuehrer a resounding 1'yestt vote. Hinden-

burg, on April 10, 1932, had received 19,359,683 votes on tlle day of his re-
election as president of tl1e Reich, tllat is to say barely more tllan half of
tlle 38,362,690 votes obtained by Hitler on Aug. 19, 1934.
Hitler had surpassed by 19,003,007 afflnnative votes tlle 19,359,683
"yes" votes obtained by his predecessor, tlle marshal, renowned though
tl1e latter was. The proof was complete. After tlle unification of the par-
ties, tl1e unification of tl1e states, tl1e unification of tl1e classes, and the so-
cial unification, all fully canied into effect., now Hitler was just completing
tlle nillitary unification and tlle ideological unification of Germany. And
a vast n1ajority of tlle nation approved. It was not a country divided into
10 rival factions that followed him haltingly, as in tlle democracies, but a
people powerfully unified.
That enonnous vote, whose like no country save Germany had seen
in tl1e course of the entire century, ought to have given the foreign gov-
ernments something to think about. Three months earlier, Hitler had
made proposals to the English and the French that were obviously
conciliatory. They had been flatly rejected. At times, England had
seemed less fanatical. On March 24, 1934, a memorandum from the
Foreign Office had suggested, not without humor: "If there must be a
burial, we might as well hold it while Hitler is willing to pay for the fu-
neral services."
But now the German referendum was going to give the British the
contrary impression that they had fallen right into a swarm of wasps. On
the very day of the plebiscite of Aug. 19, 1934, as if wishing to take re-
venge for it in advance, the British government rejected tlle last possibil-
ity of world disarmament: it proclaimed that Britain was renouncing
entirely its inclination to disarm and was immediately going to double its
air force and fonn 42 new squadrons.
True to his offer made to the British in March 1934-an offer churl-
ishly rejected by the French-Hitler had two montlls before, in a unilat-
eral gesture, reduced tlle SA by two-thirds and disarmed the remaining
third. As for his air force, at that time it was virtually nil. With that being
the case, what possible rhyme or reason was there in this initiative of
England's that could only be considered by Gennany as a provocation?
It must inevitably start a reaction, for if the British, instead of reduc-
ing their air force by a third, abruptly doubled it, why would the Ger-
mans be alone in not having their own air force? Why did they have to
A LANDSLIDE VICTORY FOR IIITLER I 421
On Tuesday Oct. 9, 1934, King Alexander I of Yugoslavia (left) and French Minister
Louis Barthou were assassinated by radical Macedonian nationalist Vlado Cher-
nozemski and by the confused gunfire of their own bodyguards. Chernozemski had
already conducted the assassination of several Bulgarian Communist politicians, and
was considered the leading terrorist in Europe until his suicide in 1934.
remain eternally prostrate in humiliating inferiority? The British deci-

sion, which, strictly speaking, nothing at the time justified, marked the
beginning of what was to become a most appalling competition, a re-
crudescence of suspicions and en1nities, and the artificial forming of
misbegotten alliances.
After having fired off their rejection of any and all offers of clisanna-
ment in a seemingly deliberate affront to Hitler (like an uppercut to the
chops), France had then for her part wasted no time: her minister offor-
eign affairs, Bruthou, his goatee flying in the wind, had iuunecliately
n1shed to \Varsaw, to Prague, to Bucharest and to Belgrade, setting his
nets everywhere as he fished for war.
Maurice Thorez was the leader of the French Communist Party until his death in 1964,
and helped establish the Popular Front-an alliance of French Communist and left-
capitalist parties-that brought Jewish leader Leon Blum to power as prime minister.
After the war the Allies, at the insistence of the Soviet Union, would make Thorez a
minister in the new French government.
CHAPTER
THE CHAllENGE TO FRENCH MARXISM
he Popular Front was going to put an end in 1936 to the

French hegemony which had triumphed at Versailles on
June 23, 1919. Her supremacy up to that time had been
overwhehning. She had reduced Germany to dismember-
1nent and misery, wresting millions of German citizens
fro1n their essential unity. In order to hem Germany in on the east, she
had created a band of satellite countries such as the long snail of
Czechoslovakia-half of whose citizens were not Czechs-and the in-
ordinately swollen goatskin bottle of a Poland, 11 million of whose in-
habitants were not Polish. These artificially manufactured states were
as much as shrul)ened daggers poised to enter the ribs of the Germans
if they should ever be seized with the ridiculous notion of holding their
heads high once more.
A second line of satellite states of the French front of Central Europe
reinforced tl1e strangulation: a corrupt Romania ready to burst and a
Serbia baptized Yugoslavia, in which three out of four of the inhabitants
were not Serbs. That had not been enough: the pact with the USSR, ap-
proved by tl1e French parlirunent on Feb. 27, 1936, was designed to fur-
ther reinforce the ranks of the assailants whom Paris was very
detennined to hurl at Berlin in the event of a new confrontation.
To the age-old and generally unreasoned aversion of the French
people to the Germru1s, there was going to be added a fierce social ha-
tred that would supple1nent the ancient antagonism. The conflict was
424 I Hn'I.ER DEMOCRAT
beconting a fight to tl1e deatl1 between Marxism and what were called
tlte fascisnlS. The latter, faced witl1 aggression, would unite. It would
be an anti-Marxist reunification of Adolf Hitler and Mussolini, adver-
saries up to tl1en, extending a hand to each other and coming together
in tl1e Ron1e-Berlin Axis.
The Hitler of 1936 was not one of those petty politicians of Weimar
who were made to stand quietly in a comer at international conferences
and to whom one handed down ukases tl1ey had to receive with an air of
affected gravity while their Tyrolean hats were sweeping the ground.
Hitler had responded to tl1e new threat of invasion that Paris had pre-
pared for him in tile east by reoccupying tl1e Rhineland, his natural de-
fense zone in tile West The tllen French premier had immediately
climbed tile wall in indignation, but no one had followed him. Hitler had
played out his reoccupation like a game of poker.
When confronted, tile democratic regimes were weak and cowardly,
tile political leaders vacillating, preoccupied every oilier year with elec-
tions past or upcoming. The French military leaders were representative
of tile regime, finical and clinging to outworn ideas of the past. The com-
mander in chief of tile French army, Gen. Gamelin, had drowned himself
in additions, subtractions and multiplications ending in an accumulation
of ze~. Nevertheless he had available hundreds of tllousands of national
and colonial soldiers. A few thousand cavalrymen hacldng their way with
sabers would have gotten to the Rhine in five or six days. At the end of
two long weeks Gamelin, abacus in hand, was still watching the arrival
of Hitler's first soldiers-who were first amazed, tl1en quickly amused-
on the banks of the Saar and the Rhine.
The plebiscite-98.8 percent of the voters for Hitler-had been tl1e
coup de gro.ce.
On that day France had lost her last chance of maintaining her Euro-
pean supremacy. Everything that happened thereafter would be but a suc-
cession of indifferent episodes of defeat and painful recovery. Louis XN,
Napoleon and Clemenceau were no longer anytlling but errant phanto1ns
in the mists of a grandiose past If the reoccupation of the Rhineland had
resulted in such a disintegration in France, it was not due just to tl1e
abulia of a Gamelin, but primarily to the anarchy of a system in which
parties and government leaders climbed the political ladder on each
other's backs, then fell, at a suicidal pace. In the 10 years from 1930 to
1940, France had 26 governments, one every five months.
THE CHALLENGE TO FRENCH MARXISM I 425
Who could have put together any serious political plan in tl1at epileptic
scramble? On tl1e other hand, Hitler, who had built his power on autl1or-
itruian democracy, was not dependent on a wild-eyed herd offour or five
hundred bickering, wrangling parliamentarians ever at odds with each
other. Thanks to Hitler's real and durable power, Gennany had been able
to make a fonnidable co1neback in less than four years. The contrast of
tl1e two political systems had been striking: an extraordinary renascence
on the one hand, disintegration and disorder on the other. The coining to
power in France in May of 1936 of the Popular Front, "/,e Front PO'[JU" or
"/,e Front Populaire" would complete the process.
De1nocratic succession, the object of such fervid admiration, has from
the first always consisted of overturning what tl1e predecessor has done
and attempting to improvise tl1e exact opposite. One stn1cture collapses.
Another replaces it. They co1ne crashing down more or less rapidly in
tum. De1nocratic succession unfailingly ends in an accumulation, ever
enriched, of collapsed walls. This sacrosanct alternation in France, in
1936, was led by a Union of the Left, succeeding a Union of the Right,
with botll unions in fact fundamentally disunited. The Rights quickly cli-
vide into 10 rights; tl1e Lefts into 10 lefts. They are "families," so to speak,
in which everyone thinks only of his own electoral fiefdo1n, of his clique,
of dirty tricks to be avoided or administered. The common denominator
of all these groups, whet11er of the right or the left, was powerlessness. In
U1e normal course of events U1e Popular Front would not have been
worse than any other. Whereas peoples are a unity-a whole-a Right or
a Left is only a divisive elen1ent, artificially separating tile vital forces of
a nation. Partisan cosn1etics change only the color; U1e sterility re1nains
constant
An additional co1nplication at the time of the corning to power in
France of U1e Popular Front was tl1e international mood in which the vic-
tor e1nerged on May 3, 1936: 378 deputies of the so-called Left opposed
to 236 deputies of tile so-called Right But above all the election had
marked U1e triu1nph of the Co1nmunists: in one stroke the Moscow con-
tingent of deputies went from 1Oto 72. The pact witl1 tl1e Soviets that had
won tllis brilliant victocy for the Extreme Left had nevertlleless been con-
ceived by the bourgeois of the Right, by a little old trotting horse like Bar-
thou; by a Laval, rich in livestock, mineral waters and radio stations; or
by a great aristocrat like Flandin-all of the1n social confornlists.
The stamp of approval they had put on Moscow had reassured the
French. \Vhy ,vottld anyone still have fears about voting for Communists
when tl\e bourgeois Right was 1naking pacts with the USSR? The result:
t11e Conununists had loon1ed up in the French Chamber of Deputies mul-
tiplied sevenfold. 'll1eir pressure had been evident from the very day of
the election on May 3, 1936. Since Hitler's nwnber one enemy was the
USSR, it was quite natural tl1at the latter's representatives in France
should push anti-Hitlerisn1 for all it was worth. National quarrels passed
almost imn1ediately onto the international plane. Within a month, any
idea at all of a rapprochement with Hitler had become unthinkable.
Just as in1portant as the accession of 72 Communists to the French
Parliament had been the arrival in tl1e same assembly of an important
number of leftist leaders of Jewish antecedents.
Since Hitler's corning to power, the mobilization of the Jews of the en-
tire world against him had been growing. That Hitler did not like them, no
one denied. Like all Gennans, he remembered the many Communist riots
that had come close to destroying Germany in 1919. All of them had been
organized, directed, and prosecuted by Communist leaders ofJewish ex-
traction. It was historically undeniable. What else were the Karl
llebknechts and Rosa Luxemburgs of Berlin? What were Levine, Lewin
and Axelrode of Munich? Some of these Jewish instigators had even been
sent personally from Petrograd by Lenin. The memory of their crimes re-
mained graven in the mind of every Gennan. Teutonic anti-Semitism was
not a new phenomenon. No more so than the anti-Semitism of the French
at the Dreyfus Affair. Or of the English, who expelled the Jews for three
centuries. Or of the Russians or the Poles, the allies of France. They had
m~red hundreds of thousands of Israelites in innumerable pogroms
over the course of the centuries. They had expelled several million of
them, especially in the direction of the United States.
Right or wrong, Europe had been anti-Jewish almost since the time of
the death of Christ.
In Germany as everywhere else, the Jews had had-in the words of
Gen. de Gaulle-the behavior of "dorninators," taking possession, with an
overly ostentatious appetite, of directing positions in business, the banks,
the bar, the medical profession, the cinema, the press. One saw them
everywhere, sometimes through magnifying glasses, but the anti.Jewish
irritation in Germany from 1919 on was obvious. Hitler had not created
it but reflected it. He had always proclaimed that in the future he would
consider the Jews of Germany as resident aliens. Germany had always
been the chosen country of Israelite immigrants. Many had made a for-
tune there. Or had at least carved themselves out a very comfortable suf-
ficiency. They loved German culture and Gennan ways. They were not
lampooned there as in France. They were not sent to Siberia as in the
USSR. And they were never nailed to barn doors as in Poland. Germany
was their preferred country in Europe. Their failing had been their im-
moderate appetite.
Later on their chosen land would be the United States, where the 2
million Jews chased out by the czars would multiply and in two genera-
tions form the most powerful lobby in the world. But before 1933, few in
number though they may have been in Gennany (less than one percent
of the population), Germany was far and away their preferred citadel.
But Hitler, in power, threatened their custom-made racial privileges. He
was shoving them more or less unceremoniously to the door. The Jewish
community is tight-lrnit: to touch a Jew is to touch all Jews. Cut a corn off
the foot of an Israelite in Frankfurt, and you've cut a hundred thousand
corns off feet in London, New York or Buenos Aires. Hitler's elevation to
the chancellorship of the Reich had thus provoked a general outcry
throughout the Jewish world and a buckling on of shields equal to that of
the 'l\velve Tribes invading the land of Canaan.
Israelite bigwigs had made fulminating declarations: "We shall un-
leash a spiritual and material war of the entire world against Germany,"
and, "Collectively and individually the German nation is a danger for us
other Jews."
The Jeunsh Chronide of May 8, 1942, would write: "We have been at
war with Germany since the first day of the seizure of power by Hitler."
As early as March 24, 1933, a statement appearing in The Daily Express
had read: "The Jewish people of tl1e entire world declare financial and
economic war on Germany." Threats on the one hand of Hitlerian meas-
ures of "self-protection" and Israelite retaliatory thrusts on the other of
"self-defense" were quickly going to create, not just in Gennany but in
the whole world, a climate of intransigence more and more malignant
and virulent. It would lead to the tragedies we are all familiar with.
No doubt Hitler in 1933 would have done better to put the anti-Ger-
man/anti-Semitism matter aside, even as he would show himself capable
of putting the damper on the anti-Polish aversion of his compatriots in
order to avert a confrontation there. And even of renouncing any claim
for return to the Reich ofAlsace-Lorraine, of Eupen and Maln1edy, and of
428 I IIITLEH DEMOCRAT
the hundreds of tl1ousands of Gennans of Trentino. No doubt, too, the

Jews nlight have sought or accepted so1ne conciliatory solution-that re-
nuuned within tl1e reahn of t11e possible for several years-instead of right
off calling for the annihilation of tl1e Gennan people, even tl1eir 1nass ster-
ilization and tl1e conversion of Gennany to "pasture land" for swineherds
and sowers of grain. Eve1yone re1ne1nbers tl1e official proposals 1nade to
tl1is effect by tl1e United States Jewish Cabinet 1ne1nber, Mr. Morgenthau.
This bilateral ftuy would finally provoke conco1nitant catastrophes.
l\1oderation and te1nporization 1night have spared humanity these
tragedies of our tiine, tragedies which doubtless will be followed by new
tragedies in tl1e future, for tllis do1nination/persecution cycle of the Jew-
ish people has been going on for 20 centuries. And there's nothing to say
tl1at tl1is perverse destiny will ever co1ne to an end, doomed under an
eten1al curse to be rebon1 with each tide on the raging sea of mankind.
This Senlite/anti-Senlite problem also a.ffected France when the Pop-
ular Front in 1936 Urrew her into the old racial conflict whose rancor had
caused her so much tunnoil tlU'ough the centuries fro1n the tiine of Saint
Louis. The leader of the victorious Popular Front was a Jew long known
for his hatred of Hitler. Hatred so blind that tlU'ee 1nontl1S before Hitler be-
caine chancellor, he had declared once and for all that Hitler ought to be
elinlinated. This Jew was nruned Leon Blu1n. He was intelligent-as so
1nany Jews are-a Jew cultivated but decadent, with a Windsor tie, a
swordfish nose, ru1d affected 1nanneris1ns. "The circu1ncised hennaph-
rodite," Leon Daudet would write. "Little girl," the others said less cruelly.
Astrange hatred had always possessed his being. He even had a predilec-
tion for the word itself and repeated it at every tu1n. "I hate you," he had
screamed right in tl1e Chamber of Deputies at llis colleagues of the right
He had said of society notables: "If I were of their world, I'd hate then1."
That being tl1e case, it is easy to see that he could not fail to hate Hitler
as well. He was, 1noreover, surrounded by a personal team con1posed
mostly ofJews. His right-hand man was nruned Bltunel; his secretary-gen-
eral, Moch; the editor-in-chief of his daily paper, le Populaire, Oreste
Rosenfeld. He had nruned three women 1ninisters: two of the1n were Jew-
ish. That kind of progressive invasion was-and will be to the end of
tirne--a Jewish mania. Fifty years after the Popular Front, France, with
Jews representing less than 2 percent of her population, would nonetl1e-
less have, politically, aJewish Prime Minister (nained Fabius); socially, a
Jewish head of tile trade unions (named Krasuski); and in religion, a.Jew-
ish archbishop at Paris, Monseigneur Lustiger (le loustic [wag, joker]),

as if the entire clergy of France were unable to provide the archdiocese
of tl1e capit.al with a single co1npetent and holy priest who was not born
in a Polish ghetto.
In 1936, when appointing his predominantly Jewish team, M. Blum
was following precisely in the biblical line which is 2,000 years old and
will still obtain in another 2,000 years. It was still imperative for the new
Jewish prune 1ninister that before throwing his hatred in Hitler's face like
a hand grenade he be able to count on a united French people. But this
was not the case: the hatred that Blum owned he had for Hitler was ac-
companied by another hatred just as furious: his clas.5 hatred. Hitler had
brought tl1e classes together. He had remade them into a community.
Blum, on the other hand, exactly like his teachera and coreligionists, Karl
Marx and Engels, meant to set them against each other.
Setting the classes against each other was to destroy them: France
was going to be tom to pieces by these senseless quarrels that were con-
trary to tl1e most elementary economic laws. Before long the entire coun-
try would be on strike. The red flag would fly from the roofs of occupied
factories, and clenched fists would be raised above heads like hammera.
That would 1nean collapse. What industrialist would take the risk of im-
proving his factories, buying new machinecy, when industrial life faced
tlrreats on every side?
Productivity having beco1ne very bad, the price of consumer goods
had shot up to 21 percent higher tl1an British prices. The general trade
deficit, which was 5.343 million francs in 1935, had almost doubled (to
10,043 million) in 1936, only to double again in 1937 (19.471 million). The
production index in France fell from 100 to 81. Whereas in Germany un-
employinent had fallen virtually to zero, it went up in France, increasing
by son1e 34,000 units. Retail plices in four months increased by 5.5 per-
cent (16.5 percent in a year). TI1e gold reserve of the Bank of France had
diminished by nearly 20 percent: 52.6 billion instead of the previous 62.8
billion. M. Blu1n had been in power only five montlls when he was forced
to devalue (43 1nilligra1ns of gold as tl1e definition of the franc instead of
65.6). Blum co1npelled every Frenchman having more than 200 grams of
gold to declare the1n. A regulation as ridiculous as it was futile. Gold dis-
appeared: 612,000 kilograms of gold were lost by the Bank of France be-
tween Septe1nber and December of 1936, representing ten billion francs.
"The root of the trouble is tl1e enonnous deficit of our treasury," de-
clared M. Jacques Rueff, one of the 1nost highly regarded specialists in the
field of 1nonetary fluctuations.
h1 June of 1937--a foregone conclusion-the specter of devaluation
rose up again. The top officials responsible for the finances of France re-
signed. Finally, on June 21, 1937, Blwn fell.
The second Popular Front government proved itself equally incapable
of stenuning the financial disaster. The Foreign Exchange Stabilization
Fund amounted to ten billion: it didn't preserve a sou of it The pound
sterling that traded at 110.8 francs climbed to 147.2. It was impossible to
halt the catastrophe. The franc would thereafter be "floating." The failure
having become absolute, it was neces.5ary to resort to another Popular
Front government, the third in 11 months. A third time it would be nec-
es.58.ry to devalue. From then on, the pound would be worth 175 francs.
Could Blum help Hitler any better than by destroying the strength of the
French people at such a pace? The anti-Hitler Blwn was converted-neg-
atively-into the number one Hitler builder-upper.
What's most amazing is tl1at, through it all, Hitler continued to pro-
mote his idea of a reconciliation with France. He had not cold-shouldered
his old Paris insulter after the latter came to power in May of 1936. Quite
to the contrary, he sent Minister Schacht, a great friend of the Jew Mon-
.tague, head of the Bank of England, to have a talk with him. Schacht was
a pragmatist Not at all a National Socialist But he had witnessed Hitler's
irresistible rise and had been forced to recognize his extraordinary gifts,
notjust as a conqueror of the masses, but as a precise organizer, as a man
of swift and fertile imagination, a creator who got thin~ done. Himself an
economist and banker, he had seen how in just a few years Hitler had
taken a countcy that was ruined, devoid of hope, with 6 million unem-
ployed languishing in misery, and made it over into a powerl'ul commu-
nity, the most powerful on the continent
Schacht wished to please Blum but not without tzying to make him un-
derstand this phenomenon: "Make no mistake, Chancellor Hitler is a man
of genius.,,
It cost Schacht something to confide that to Blum, because he was
envious of Hitler. He had dreamed of becoming the second Hindenburg
of the Reich. Hitler had eliminated his chances. But the facts being what
they were, he had wished to lead Blum to support the inevitable as he
did and to check Hitler by means of agreements instead of exasperating
him. In vain he had proposed "a general settlement of the Franco-Ger-
THE CHALLENGE TO FRENCH MAHXISM I 431
man conflict" to the new French prime minister "but might as well have
batted his head against the Wailing Wall." Schacht was personally very
1nuch a Francophile. He even composed charn1ing poems in French. He
recited so1ne to 1ne when, as an old man, he came to see 1ne in my exile
in Spain. But he had absolutely no success working his charm on Blum
in 1936 either in verse or prose. His plan of econ01nic collaboration was
not even examined.
He just got this astounding reply of Blum's: "I am a Marxist, and I am
a Jew." Evidently for Blum, Marxism and Semitism came before any care
for France.
Fonner Prune Minister Joseph Caillaux, the most intelligent politician
in France, had once hurled these words at Blum: "You have no soil of
France on the soles of your shoes."
Despite everything, Hitler had offered Bh.1m~ven though Blum was
Jewish-to coordinate and combine the power of the reborn Gennany
with the ancient and so long radiant energy of the French people; but it
was in vain. If only from the social point of view, the Gennan experience
could have been of real interest to any would-be refonner of the neigh-
boring country. The lot of the worker in Gennany had been entirely trans-
fonned: in salaries and wages, housing, paid leave, leisure time, vacations,
fainily protection, the consideration of work and worker. Those refonns
merited more than just a scornful rejection. But how could anyone imag-
ine that an extre1ne anti-Hitler racist such as Blun1 would draw inspiration
from or t.ake as a patte1n anything whatsoever that Hitler had done. Even
if it were good. Especially if it were good.
TI1e people of France were going to have to ignore the social transfor-
mation that was giving new life to Gennany.
Any French politician who wasn't blinded by hatred ought at least to
have been able to see that if 21 million Gennan workers, among them
6 million former Conununists, had come to vote en bwc for Hitler, freely
and of their own accord, there had to be some reason for it. Nonnally
they would have reflected and made comparisons. With Blum, co1npar-
ison was absolutely forbidden. Blum's only slogall was and would in-
variably be: hate, though it bring tJ1e end of peace and the fall of France.
For hiin, the Third Reich was Sodom that the avenging fire of Israel was
to rumihilate.
After the Saar plebiscite restored the Saartand to Germany in 1935, Germany rearmed
itself and, in 1936, was able to push the French occupation forces out of the Rhineland
without violent incident Though some say this was a "violation of the Treaty of Ver-
sailles,• the Rhineland had been occupied by the French military illegally in 1923, after
Germany had proven itself unable to pay its exorbitant debts to France.
CHAPTER
RETURN TO THE RHINElAND
dolf Hitler may, in his anger, have sent French Ambassador

Franc;ois-Poncet back to his emb~, but it was not out of
any lack of esteem for him. In his view, Franc;ois-Poncet was
an excellent diplomat, even when his s1y intrigues were at
the expense of the Reich. Adolf Hitler often praised his
savoirfaire, his perfect knowledge of the Gennan language and even the
zeal with which he showered pralines on the salons of Berlin. Adolf Hitler
was also appreciative of the very French charms of the ambassador's
wife, upon whose grace and whose ascendant influence in German soci-
ety he had often remarked. But the matter went beyond the merely per-
sonal. The low blow the French government had just dealt him was of
another order entirely. The deceitful publication of an interview when it
was no longer relevant or would be given a totally different meaning, was
a villainy he wouldn't excuse.
Militarily, too, following the definite vote on the Franco-Russian pact,
everything had changed. Now the French were teamed up with a gigantic
enemy ready to waylay Gennany in the East, a military enemy as in 1914,
but in 1936 also a political enemy, and the bearer of a revolution that had
come close to destroying her after 1918. Now Gennany's bordexs were no
longer covered.
Eastward, East Prussia was an island, completely separated from the
Reich since 1919 by the so-called Polish Corridor. To the west, on the
other hand, the vast area of the Rhineland, demilitarized by the 'Ireaty of
~H I IIITLEH DEMOCRAT
Versailles, no,v lay wide open to te1nptation. The Rhine provinces were
,vithout defense to a depth of several hundred kilo1neters. Their nlilitary
barracks were e1npty, and tlley lived under tlle tlu·eat of the enonnous
l\1aginot Line, a fabulous wall of concrete case1nated for hundreds of kilo-
nleters and b1istllng with cannon and antitank rails.
Nov.r tJ,at France was sure of Soviet support, Gennany could at any
nlon,ent be invaded across tl1e Rhine-as Poincare had done three tunes
already-or even well beyond it. The French anny was capable of de-
ploying 50 divisions (she had 100 divisions) at the slightest incident
Adolf Hitler knew tllis better than anyone. But he never launched his
staggering blows without long reflection in solitude. After each of his dra-
n1atic actions people thought he had ntshed into the1n in a fit of spleen,
but tlley were nlistaken. When Adolf Hitler 1nade the decision to charge-
then taking action witl1 the swiftne$ of a tiger-it was only after carefully
and silently weighing his chances of bringing it off successfully.
After having dis1nissed Ambassador Francois-Poncet, he shut himself
up in his office. For two days he remained alone, nibbling some tidbit or
other or absentnlindedly emptying a glass of 1nilk brought hiln by a silent
1nanservant, H.B. Gisevius. Then he called togetl1er tl1e several officials
he was going to charge witl1 putting into effect the n1aturely calculated de-
cision he had reached in his 1neditation. It was no longer a n1atter for dis-
cussion. With Adolf Hitler, tl1ere was never any question of discussing.
At the hour of decision, when he called his people together, it was not to
receive their advice; it was to give orders, to take action. A strong mind
is not a ballot box. A leader is not tl1e su1n of multiple mdecision.
"It is now or never tl1at we must act," he said. Act how? "We are going
back into the Rhineland." Across fro1n Adolf Hitler, Gen. von Blo1nberg,
who would have to run the lnilitary operation, looked at hi.In in astonish-
ment He was stunned. For two Ininutes he said not a word. To go back
into tl1e Rhineland was to ntsh headlong toward an encounter witl1 nearly
a hundred French divisions-divisions tl1at could be backed up in tl1e
east and southeast by another hundred divisions of the allies of the Little
Entente. In two days or three, the Third Reich could be blown away.
What was there to oppose the ene1ny? Not even the equivalent of tl1e
fonner Reichswehr, since that had just been broken up into tl1e fonn of
cadres in the 36 divisions of tl1e new Wehnnacht, which, at tl1e beginnh1g
of March of 1936, was still only in the beginning stage of its fonnation. TI1e
first armored units and the first air units had jttst barely begun their train-
RETURN TO THE RHINELAND I 435
ing. Tactically, they were inoperative. "If we ran into the French anny, it
would be a cUsaster," the general stated. Hitler simply replied, "France
will not 1nake a n1.ove.,,
He intuitively sensed great opportunities. He sensed how things
would turn o,ut. All the others were thinking that the French anny-
flags flying, clarions sounding, and offi.ce·rs prancing on their mounts-
would within a week be surging through the streets of Mainz and
Cologne. But Hitler, nostrils flaring, endowed like a lynx or an eagle
with the special sense that diet.ates the moment when it is imperative
to act, knew that his adversary would remain nailed to the ground like
a rabbit and would not react
An anny is not just an assemblage of divisions, a heaping up of ma-
chine guns and cmmon. It is also a psychological force, it is a spirit, a will,
a conviction that brings plans and decisions into focus. Adolf Hitler had
tl1e visionary's gift, a thing not possessed by military men with one--track
nlinds and a systematic opposition to innovation. "All the dangers you
describe," he said to Blomberg-and to Schacht and von Neurath, who
were there as well and petrified with emotion-would perhaps be true in
the event of a reaction by the French, but actually they are illusoiy, for
de1nocratic France is soft, without faith, and she will not make a move."
Moreover, he had not smnmoned these men to his office to learn what
they thought. Blomberg would prepare the entry of troops into the
Rhineland; Neurath would give his assurance of diplomatic support for
the operation; and Schacht, his financial supporl "Carry out my orders
and tn1St 1ne for the rest" TI1e aged Schacht., with his big round head like
a hundred year old lion; Neuratl1, formal as a head waiter; Blomberg, stiff
as if he had been 111ade to swallow his sword; there was nothing for them
to do but to co1ne to attention and withdraw without saying a word.
On the monling of March 7, although consunted with fear, they had
nonetheless caiTied out their orders. In the greatest secrecy, th.e few avail...
able Wehnnacht troops:had been put on trains and trucks during the ni.ght
and were already en route to an operation of which they knew nothing.
The 600 German deputies for their part had received summons by
special n1essenger to a meeting of the Reichstag at 10 o'clock in the
morning. Not one of them lmew that .in a fe·w hours a number of German
battalions would be crossing the bridges of the Rhine. Adolf Hitler ad-
vanced to the rostrum. His face was like marble. Only his small mus-
tache betrayed a slight movement.
The spectators, tl1e diplo1natic corps in full force in the galleries, the
press witl1 pens poised, all were as if frozen: why tllis sudden convocation
of the Reichstag? What announcement, what surprise would be forth-
conung?
Before releasing the big news, Adolf Hitler corrunenced by explaining
tl1e political and moral basis of tl1e decision he meant to reveal: "To re-
peated offers of friendship and peaceful assurances, France has re-
sponded witl1 a military alliance with the Soviet Union that is directed
solely and exclusively at Gennany and that constitutes a violation of the
Rltlne Pact. From that moment on tile Treaty of Locamo became mean-
ing!~ and has for all practical purposes ceased to exist. The German
government no longer considers itself bound by that treaty, now null and
void Henceforth it finds itself compelled to confront the new situation
created by this alliance, a situation tilat is further aggravated by the fact
that tile Franco-Soviet Treaty is paired witil a parallel treaty of alliance be-
tween the USSR and Czechoslovakia"
Notwitllst.anding the conclusion of this Franco-Czech-Soviet alliance
directed specifically at Germany, Adolf Hitler wished to emphasize that
he still favored a rapprochement with tile West. The diplomats were all
ears. What proposals of appeasement was Adolf Hitler going to offer?
They were fowfold. First, he supported in advance any reciprocal nonag-
gression agreements with his neighbors. Second, he supported in advance
a limitation of all military air forces. Third, he offered a 25-year nonag-
~ion pact, that is to say, a quarter of a centwy of peace for the entire
West And the fourth proposal? Witil the skill of a sleight of hand artist,
he brought it forth and addressed it especially to his most anxious neigh-
bors, the French. He offered to carry out a demilit:arization of both banks
of tile Rhine border.
That was tile supreme piece of astuteness, because on the German
side of the Rltlne there were no forts, not even earthworks, facing Alsace.
But on the other side, contrarily, the French had for the past 10 years
been devoting all their financial resources to tile building-and it had just
been brought to completion--0f the fantastic Maginot Line. If they both
demilitarized the Rhine, the Germans strictly speaking would not be de-
militarizing anything, since for the past 17 years, that is since the Treaty
of Versailles, the Rhineland had to be completely demilitarized. The
French anny on the other hand, in tile event of a demilitarization of both
banks of the Rhine, would be brought back behind their formidable for-
RETURN TO THE RHINELAND I 4.37
tiflcations sitting there between vineyards and turnip fields.

'lb cloak his offer in arguments that were typically French, the adroit
Adolf Hitler was tllere renewing an exact proposal made by French Prime
Minister Viviani at the end ofJuly 1914. Adolf Hitler was proposing to the
French what they themselves had proposed earlier to the Germans.
But-if he was being understood-if Adolf Hitler was offering disar-
mament of some kilo1neters of the Rhine opposite Strasbourg, on one
bank as well as on tile otller, did that mean he regarded Germany as al-
ready being back on the right bank? That was close to dead right. With the
growing threat of being strangled-France having allied herself with the
Soviets-Adolf Hitler considered tllat the western border could no longer
remain wide open. By signing the Franco-Soviet pact aimed at him, they
had given him a magnificent excuse. Like a cat, he ju1nped on it. And for
the final drrunatic effect "By virtue of tlle inalienable light every people
possesses of guaranteeing its borders and of safeguarding its means of de-
fense, the Gennan goverrunent has reest.ablished, as of this date, tl,e full
and complete sovereignty of the Reich over the demilitarized zone of the
Rhine. As I speak to you at this historic mon1ent Gennan troops have just
entered the western provinces of the Reich in order to occupy their
peacetiine ganisons," Hitler stated. The 600 Gennan deputies at that mo-
ment crune bolt upright as though a fantastic spring had hurled them out
of their chairs.
Adolf Hitler, on the rostn1m, could say no more. The Alnerican re-
po1ter, Wtllirun Shirer; who was present at the session of the Reichstag,
telegraphed his paper an hour later: "He can go no farther. The deputies
rise, they're shouting, cheering madly, their eyes ablaze, their faces trans-
figured in a kind of deliriu1n."
After interminable cheering, tile session ended in a twnult. The com-
motion was fantastic. One man alone went out, taut witl1 anxiety, his face
contorted. "I bu1nped into Gen. von Blomberg," the American reporter
adds. "He looked livid, his cheeks twitching uncontrollably."
The Rubicon, which is to say the Rhine, had just been crossed. At
12:50 sharp, a captain on horseback had appeared on the great Cologne
bridge. He was followed by a battalion that had hastily detrained. Their
appearance seemed unbelievable to tlle whole town. The troops moved
into the streets. A flight of Goering's aircraft had swept across the sky.
Then a second. Then a third. Then it was really true. They were there.
People crune pouring out of the houses. They were ntnning in all direc-
~~8 I HITLER DEMOCRAT
tions, sheaves of roses and can1ations filling their anns. Artillery had fol-
lo,ved. Then son1e 1notorized troops. And even a few deafening tanks,
likely all that Gennany possessed in 1935.
It is a Frenclunan, the historian Benoist-Mechin, who has best de-
scribed-better tl1an any Gennan-that great occasion:
The great bell of the cathedral is set in motion, mingling the

clmnor of the bronze with the throbbing of the motors. In less than
an hour the whole town of Cologne is transformed into a sea of
flags. The people frantically cheer the troops parading in the post
office square. Girls are throwing flowers to the officers and to the
soldiers. The anxious tension of the first minutes is succeeded
now by delirious enthusiasm. "At the same moment, identical
scenes are taking place all over the Rhineland. At Cologne, at
Koblenz, at Mainz, at Mannheim, the bridges resound with the ca-
dence of the soldiers. Eighteen years ago, in the foggy half-light
of November, these same bridges vibrated beneath the dismal
tread of the west.em armies coming back from the front, defeated
and harassed. With difficulty though in good order, the men came
on, clad in pat;ched tunics, their eyes filled with tragic despair, car-
rying their useless rifles and supporting their comrades with
bloody feet Now the movement is in the opposite direction and in
the radiant clarity of a spring day. The soldiers parading are young
recruits of the class of 1914. They have new unifonns and equip-
ment., and in their eyes burns an ardent resolve.
All that is impressive. But what is France's reaction going to be? In

Paris, they went directly from stupefaction to fury. It was still only two
o'clock in the afternoon, and the first German officer had crossed the
Cologne bridge only 70 minut.es ago, when the French prime minister,
Maurice Sarraut., had a radio microphone in his hand. With his two big
eyes starting out of his head and dark circles underneath, he blinked his
eyelids feverishly like an owl.
"Gennany," he cried, "has just reoccupied the left bank of the Rhine!
I solemnly declare: France will never negotiate with Gennany as long as
Strasbourg is within range of Gennan artillery."
But apart from these warlike exclamations, was there really going to
be war? For a few hours, everything led to that belief. The units that gar-
risoned tl1e French eastern border had immediat.ely been sent on full alert
to occupy their combat positions on the Maginot Line. North African di-
visions-were "darkies" [blacks and colonial immigrants] going to be
seen on the Rhine again?-had received orders to come up from the
south, where they were in garrison, to the German border. That same af-
ternoon, Prime Minister Sarraut, even though he was more or less on his
way out of office, had called a meeting of his military ministers. Because
in France there was not just one responsible official, as with the Wehr-
macht There were three of them: Gen. Maurin, minister of war; M. Marcel
Deat, minister of the air force; M. Fran~ois Pietri, minister of the navy; and
even a fourth minister in disguise, the chief of the General Staff, Gen.
Gamelin.
A famous old Englishman had once said: "The question is not to know
if one general is better than another, but if one general is worth more than
two." In Paris, there were four military chiefs. The prime minister, who
supervised them and would have to bear with their disputes and contra-
dictions, was himself ignorant even of what active military forces France
had at her disposal-a thing unheard of, especially at such a time.
Whereas someone like Adolf Hitler knew his military capabilities right
down to the last artillecy echelon, and had only to give his orders to a sin-
gle responsible official, in Paris the prime minister was incapable of dic-
tating a plan of action and did not even know what military forces his
countcy had available.
On that afternoon ·he could only humbly ask his quarter-powered su-
perchiefs for information. "Well, then, where do we stand?" he asked his
chief of the general staff and the three ministers. As if he himself should
not be first and foremost the one to know. "What measures must we take
in response to the provocation of the Germans?" In a week Adolf Hitler
had worked out, prepared, settled and ordered his plan ofaction, and me-
tllodically sent the advance troops on their way. Sarraut had been plenty
vocal on the radio, but he did not have any idea of what he was going to
do or even of what he could do. And he would be lmocked for a loop
when his four eminent waniors explained that they were far from being
in a fit state to engage in combat
The official text of the dialogue is dun1bfounding, so clearly does it
reveal ignorance on the one hand and faintheartedness on the other. Sar-
raut: "What is the army's situation, and how much time will we need to go
into action?"
440 I IIITI.EH OEMOCHAT
Gen. Grunelin: "To proceed beyond tl1e Maginot Line would not be in
tJ1e count1y's interest"
Sarraut, falling back on a last reso1t: "Couldn't we at least recover the
Saar by sending in a few light units?"
Gaiuelin: "Witl1out support by several regular divisions it would be
vecy 1isl<y."
Sarraut "What's to stop us fron1 doing that?"
Grunelin: "Just calling back the soldiers on leave won't give us enough
n1en. We'll have to decree a general n1obilization."
In evecy general staff in the world, all 1nanner of solutions, both offen-
sive ru1d defensive, are anticipated well ahead of ti.tne. France had always
used evecy 1neans at her disposal whenever it was a question of a lapse
on Gennruty's part or of teaching Gennany a lesson. But in 18 years she
had never had to deal with any measures of replisal or inthnidation. A
few thousru1d soldiers of the Wehrn1acht had begun to march and the
whole of France had to be n1obilized.
That was the only solution tl1at tl1e four great professionals of the mil-
itary could offer tl1eir prin1e minister-hirnself totally ignorant of the nill-
itacy capabilities of their country. Poland, Czechoslovakia, Romania,
Yugoslavia-whose annarnents France had provided and supervised-
had all pro1nised in case of an alert to support the foster-fatherland at
once. Each of then1 had an anny infinitely larger than the Wehnnacht in
1935. But tl1at was not enough. Gen. Grunelin would not take tl1e risk of
accepting tl1eir offers of seIVice, although Poland had corrununicated her
offer to Paris tl1at vecy day.
The European allies of France would not forget her apathy. They had
seen that France would not even run the risk of taking up anns when her
direct interests were at stake. Why then would she do it for others? At
best, France would not be disposed to ntn any risks except insofar as
Great Britain should decide to share them. Well, for a second disappoint-
ment (an enonnous disappointlnent), the British had not been particu-
larly shocked by the reentcy of the Gennans into their Rhineland
provinces. They thought it was rather to be expected. The most stubbon1
of Gem1any's foes in 1918, Lloyd George, a signatory of the Versailles
Treaty, had even st.ated: "As I see it, tl1ere had been provocation." What
provocation? It was evident that for Lloyd George, tl1at provocation was
the signing of the Franco-Soviet Pact England had received that with ex-
tren1e suspicion. For tl1e British, tile return of the German anny to Koeln
and Trier was not much of a shock.

For Pri1ne Minister Baldwin, "Gennany" had purely and simply "re-
turned to her own garden." Lord Lothian had been of the same opinion:
"After all, the Gennans are doing no more than recovering the back yard
of their own house."
The British press had shown no sign of astonishment either. TI1e his-
tolian Chastenet, a 1nen1ber of the Institute of France, obsetved that all
of the papeIS, fro1n the imperialist Sunday Di,spat.ch to the socialist Daily
Herald, including tl1e sedate Times, and with the sole exception of the
Conununist Daily Worker, made a point of downplaying the German ges-
ture. In the Observer, specializing in foreign policy, Garvin had gone as far
as to approve of Adolf Hitler.
Lloyd George declared: "Tile remilitarization, if not strictly legal, ap-
pears to me to be completely justifiable." Anthony Eden was no less ex-
plicit: "Tilere wasn't one person in a thousand in England ready to risk his
own skin to participate with France in any action against the reoccupa-
tion of tl1e Rhineland by Gennany." Although disn1ayed, even Churchill
would adnl.it tJ1at "these statements perhaps expressed the opinion of the
British people."
So then, what about San-aut in a rage at his microphone? And Stras-
bourg under Adolf Hitler's big guns? And the Saar that ought to have been
inunediately reoccupied? And Gamelin with his little rabbit eyes.... Was
England really going to drop France when Adolf Hitler's fifes and the
diocesan bells were sounding fron1 one end to the otl1er of the ancient fief
of Napoleon and Poincare?
Considered a bit of a dandy, Anthony Eden was a warmongering British politician who
helped drive the British Empire into its self-destructive and suicidal war with Germany
in 1939. He resigned from the British government in 1938 to protest the British policy
of peace in Europe, and only returned in 1940 when Britain had committed itself to
war. Eden remained in positions of Influence in the British government after the war.
NEWSCOM
CHAPTER
THE lONDON-PARIS DISAGREEMENT
he thing that 1nost interested the British-far more than the

1natter of knowing whether the Gennans did or did not have
the right to go back into their Rhineland provinces-was
Adolf Hitler's tl1reefold offer: the reduction in aerial an11a-
1nent; the negotiation of a nonaggression agreement; and,
above all, the signing of a 25-year mutual peace pact.
France had instantly rejected the whole package; as far as she was
concerned, no one but the poilus had any right to carry anns in tl1e
Rhineland. England had taken an obvious interest in the Gen11an plan,
and she did not intend that it should once again be refused discussion.
Lord Philip Snowden, Great Britain's most energetic delegate in the Inter-
national Conferences, let that be lmown categorically: "Adolf Hitler's pre-
vious peace proposals might have been ignored, but the people of
England would not allow this last offer to be shunted aside as well."
France was quite conversant with the state of mind of the British.
Great Britain had previously infonned M. Laval in no uncertain tern1S,
well before the signing of tl1e Franco-Soviet Pact, that she strenuously
objected to it. Likewise, on March 7, 1936, the day of tl1e Gennan anny's
return to the Rhineland, she had hurriedly ordered her runbassador in
Paris to see tl1e outgoing president of the council, M. Sarraut, at once to
warn hiin and to request tllat in any case the French goveflllnent not take
"any 1nilitacy measures witllout first asking Great Britain's advice." The
warning could scarcely have been more direct.
~f. Flandin, president of the new French government, had called a

nteeting in Paris for the next day with tl1e Blitish secretaries Eden and
Halifax, as well as tl1e Belgian Prune Minister Van Zeeland and the Italian
representative, Signor Cen1tti.
iiinister Flandin first tlied to ilnpress his guests with a few startling
announcen1ents: "We ourselves are sufficiently well armed to force the
Gennan anny to evacuate tl1e territory it has occupied in violation of the
treaties. It is a flagrant violation. France has an incontestable right to take
action. To respect the desire of Great Britain, France has informed the
League of Nations so tllat the Council may take note of the breach with
tl1e least possible delay. But at tl1e same time France has taken and is
going to take military measures preparatory to the intervention which
she considers indispensable. France does not propose to act solely to en-
sure her own safety, but to guarantee the territorial clauses of the Treaty
of Versailles in future."
But England had just finished shattering the Versailles Treaty a few
months earlier, on the day she had signed her naval agreement with Adolf
Hitler. To speak of this dead and buried treaty again, to take it out of its
moldy coffin could not help but irritate the British. "Language of that
kind," noted M. Benoist-Mechin, "is exactly what England does not wish
to hear."
M. Flandin's rodmnont.ades were succeeded by icy admonishments
on the part of the tw~ Englishmen. Secretary Eden: "I have been com-
missioned by the British government to urge the French government to
take no action with regard to Germany that may create a danger of war."
Lord Halifax said, "The litigation created by the reoccupation of the
Rhineland must be settled by negotiation; his majesty's government is
ready to assume the role of mediator. Furthermore, Chancellor Adolf
Hitler has made a number of proposals, some of which at least are
worth considering. No decision should be made before the meeting of
the League of Nations Council, whose intervention is considered in-
dispensable both by the Parliament and by British public opinion." As
Churchill wrote, "their English allies did not hesitate to dissuade them
from taking any action." They were no longer possible collaborators;
they were icebergs.
Even the Belgian prime minister and the Italian delegate as well ex-
pressed themselves in an equally frigid manner. Flandin, in desperation,
embarked on a humble entreaty he thought might arouse British pride: "If
THE LONDON-PARIS DISAGREEMENT I 445
England acts, she can take over the leadership of Europe." It was in vain.
"Anthony Eden, the British foreign secretary," Sorbonne professor
Pierre Renouvin reports, "urges the French government to 'stay cool' and
t.o take no 'irreparable' initiatives." On the 9th of March, in the House of
Commons, the same statesman declares that the "reoccupation of the
Rhineland, an inexcusable act to the extent that it repudiates promises
freely given (those of Locamo), does not, however, imply any threat of
hostilities, since the German chancellor offers to conclude a pact of
nonaggression; and the British Cabinet is therefore of the opinion that
tl1ere is reason to examine this German offer." The leader of the Liberal
opposition expresses the same opinion and remarks tllat the German ini-
tiative is not "an act of aggression against the t.errit.ory of any stat.e."
Some years later Churchill would again recall the state of mind of his
compatriots, the "easygoing English," as he called them: "After all, the
Gennans only went back into a land tllat was their own. What should we
say, for example, if we had been banned from Yorkshire for 10 or 15
years?"
The exaggerations, too, had result.eel in mistrust. The Paris press, fairly
raving, had announced that Gennan soldiers had ent.ered the Rhineland
by the tens of thousands. The figure of 35,000 was specified. Some even
spoke of 60,000 men. The public saw them already smashing their way
into France. As a matter of fact, the 35,000 or 60,000 Gennans with shin-
ing bayonets were only four battalions that first day. And it was not dag-
gers they were clenching in their t.eeth, but daisies that had been thrown
to them by the girls of Trier and Koblenz. All the rest wasjustjournalistic
bunkum.
Once it was over Adolf Hitler would confess, "The 48 hours that fol-
lowed the entry of the troops into the Rhineland were the most trying of
my life. If the French had sent their troops marching into the Rhineland
at that moment, we'd have had to withdraw with our tails between our
legs, because the military resources we had at our disposal wouldn't have
allowed us to show even a semblance of resistance."
This increasing of the number of Gennan soldiers a hundredfold by
U1e foreign press had played right into Adolf Hitler's hand. It had at once
so upset and alanned the Gamelins and other bold fellows who, facing the
awful waves of tens of thousands of invaders, had been obliged to pro-
claim they could not hold out against them without a general mobiliza-
tion. Adolf Hitler, self-confident, scoffed to see such panic, and in order
•146 I IIITL.En DEMOCRAT
to accentuate it, he dispatched additional relief divisions-verbally. "What

,vould have happened," he later said, "if so1neone other than 1nyself had
been at the head of the Reich? Anyone else would have lost his head. I
,vas obliged to lie, and I was saved by 1ny unshakable stubbo1nness and
self-as.stu-ru\ce. I threatened to send six nlore divisions into the Rhineland
unless \\'e had a detente. In tnttll, I had no 1nore than four bligades."
The only other possibility available to France rested witl1 tl1e League
of Nations conference tl1at had been called for by U1e B1itish and was due
to take place in London on tlle 17th of March. President Paul Etienne
Flandin, to be sure, had to n1ake up his ntlnd to attend. The first English
daily put into his hands at tlle e1nbassy was the 'limes. The lead article
had a prontlsing headline: "A Chance to Rebuild"; but that chance was
tlle opposite of everything that a Frenclunan ntlght hope for. The special
correspondent of L'Oeuvre who acco1nprutled M. Flandin would later
write: "We no sooner anive in London than I run thunderstruck at the
,vave of rulti-French feeling surging tlu-ough the capital. At the House of
Conunons, where I go the next day, it is considered good fonn to be 'anti-
French.' Everyone is anti-French, even tl1e Labour 1nembers. In the
Strand, the cars going by are carrying big posters saying: 'Gennany wants
peace, let France make tlle best of it' " It had co1ne to the point of delib-
erate affronts: "France today stands alone,tt the joun1alist adds, "and the
British attitude is such that some French delegates are refusing invita-
tions to tl1e ho1nes of members of Parlirunent or English industrialists."
Was there no one in London to who1n M. Flandin could tum? He had
tried in vain to convince the chancellor of the exchequer, Mr. Neville
Chamberlain, who everyone in London knew was going to beco1ne the
head of the government Mr. Chrunberlain had sad, watery, bulging eyes.
Sad, too, was ltls long nose and ltls lichen mustache. He felt powerless.
Parliament ru1d the public were opposed to any ar1ned intetvention.
Prime Minister Stanley Baldwin, already on his way out, could only repeat
to his French colleague Flru1din in a n1ost cou1teous way, "I run able to in-
terpret precisely tl1e opinions of tl1e British people. And what these peo-
ple want is peace."
M. Flandin was just flogging a dead horse. How were they to dispose
of tl1e body? For 17 years the League of Nations had been well-known as
a funeral parlor. And it was now going to organize a discreet interment
that would take place in the course of tlle London session over a period
of four days, fro1n the 14th to tl1e 18tll of March, 1936. A few noble ora•
THE LONDON-PARIS DISAGREEMENT I 447
tions would be pronounced at the court of St. James. But on the 14th of
March the Gennan generals had already for a week been drinking a very
d1y white wine in tl1e well-ordered inns of the Rhine and the Moselle. For
four days the inten1ational delegates chattered and dozed under the chair-
manship of an Australian who was evidently extremely preoccupied with
tJ1e idea that a Pn1s.sian with a rifle could be witllin 10 kilometers of the
bell tower of the Strasbourg cathedral.
To allay the bitterness of the potion that France would have to swal-
low, Secretary Eden had made a final effort aimed at getting Gennany to
accept "having its reoccupation preseive a symbolic character." Adolf
Hitler had responded with disdainful humor: "Theres channing neighbors
for you; they would forbid me to bolt my door."
Finally, on the last day of the League of Nations session, Mr. Eden ut-
tered a disenchanting verdict: "This action does not represent an action
against peace and does not require the direct countermeasures pro-
vided in certain cases by the Treaty of Locarno. No doubt the reoccu-
pation of the Rhineland co1npromises the power of France; but it does
not in any way co1npronlise her security." The Soviet delegate, Mr. Litvi-
nov, his head hidden behind an issue of the Times, had not bothered to
listen. "A totally futile statement," munnured M. Benoist-Mechin, "be-
cause Adolf Hitler is not called on to withdraw his troops. There is no
question either of 1nilitary inteivention, or of reprisals, or of sanctions
of any kind. On the contrary. Gennany expected a condemnation; she
obtained a satisfactory report."
Herr von Ribbentrop had not scrupled to attend the mourning of all
these den1ocratic relations. And since everybody had spoken-to no pur-
pose-he, too, before the end of the funeral ceremonY, was going to
speak, but this time to say something. He availed himself of this interna-
tional tribune to n1ake another official statement, this one not futile:
Chancellor Adolf Hitler has fonnulated a series of proposals in

favor of peace. They have been disregarded. He proposed a general
disarmament It was turned down. He proposed anning on a parity
basis of armies of 200,000 men. It was turned down. He proposed to
raise the number to 300,000 men. It was turned down.
He proposed an air agreement It was turned down. fu his speech
of May 21, 1935, he proposed a group of measures designed to en-
sure peace in Europe. Nothing of them was retained apart from
arrangements relative to disannament on the sea which have seived

as tl1e basis of the Franco-Gennan naval agreement The chancellor
of the Reich has again and again repeated his offers of peace and-
if I may say it here-he and all Gem1any hoped that the Franco-So.
viet Pact would not be ratified.
When the French parliament ratified that pact, ignoring his offers
and his warnings, the chancellor of tl1e Reich, conscious of his heavy
responsibilities toward the German people, drew from it the only
conclusion he could draw: and he reestablished German sovereignty
over all the territory of the Reich. In so doing, the German govern-
ment based its action on the following facts:
1. In consequence of the unilateral action of France, the spirit
and the letter of tl1e Locarno Pact have been so radically distorted
that the pact has lost its vitality.
2. In consequence of the new military alliance concluded be-
tween France and the USSR, Germany was constrained to exercise
without delay the elementary right every nation has of securing t11e
safety of its own t.erritory. That is why the government of the Reich
cat.egorically rejects as totally groundless the accusation of having
unilaterally violated the Treaty of Locamo. It is utterly impossible
to violat.e an agreement that the actions of the other signatory have
already rendered null and void.
No one breathed a word or contraclict.ed the argument. The session

was concluded without further discussion. They all picked up their opera
hats and made their way to the exit.
The next day the petty diplomatic game of international courtesies
continued as though nothing had occurred. Secretary Eden received von
Ribbentrop quite amiably in his office "to examine in what measure it
would be ~ible to reconcile what still exists of the 'Ireaty of Locamo."
Prime Minister Baldwin was no less co1nplaisant He thought it oppor-
tune, on the 24th of March, to invite Ambassador von Ribbentrop to
lunch. The accused had been transformed into an honored guest
At that same time in the Rhineland itself, immense ecstatic crowds of
people waving sheaves of flowers were cheering Adolf Hitler, who had
come to make the liberator/proprietor tour of the grounds. "The unbe-
lievable has con1e to pass," Benoist-Mechin could only note, "and Adolf
Hitler has won. Despite the advice of his generals and the wamin~ of
his diplomats, he engaged in a contest he had less than five chances in a
TUE LONDON-PARIS DISAGREEMENT I 449
The Locarno Treaty legalized, in the mind of the West, the territorial gains that resulted
from the French aggressions which followed the First World War, but left open the
question of the exact position of the border between Germany and Poland. From left
to right, Gustav Stresemann, Austen Chamberlain and Aristide Briand during the Lo-
carno negotiations. CREDIT: FEDERAL GERMAN ARCHIVE/WIKIPEDIA
htu1dred of canying through succe~fully. And yet he won all along the
line. '\Veil, generals,' he says, 'which of us was right? You were wrong to
be pe~itnistic. I told you tl1at France wouldn't budge.' Agai11St all likeli-
hood, his prediction crune true." TI1e An1erican anti-Nazi writer, \Vtllirun
L. Shirer, would in tu1n aclmowledge: "It was Adolf Hitler, thanks to his
nerves of steel, who saved the day."
The cheers of just the Rhinelanders were not sufficient Adolf Hitler
wa11ted all tl1e Gennan people to expr~ their opinion not only on this
n1atteroftl1e return to tl1e Rhineland, a masterpiece of his will, but on tl1e
whole of his adlni11istration since Jan. 30, 1933. TI1e question posed to
the 45,000,000 voters of tl1e Reich encon1passed eve.cything: the liquida-
tion of tl1e old parties and tl1e old federal states; the wiping out of Co1n-
rnunis1n; tl1e great social conquests; and even tl1e En1St Roehin affair of
only a few n1ontl1S ago. No idle cJaptrap; tl1e text sub1nitted to tl1e free a11d
secret vote of all tl1e Gem1ans was short and con1prehensive: "Do you
approve of what has been acco1nplished by tl1e F\tehrer of tl1e Reich in
the course of tlle last tJrree years?"

The result, on March 29, 1936, surpassed anything any European
statesn1an had ever obtained: 44,411,911 Germans, or 98.8 percent of
tJ1ose voting, answered witl1 a "yes." As in the preceding plebiscite, no-
tlli.ng could have prevented tl1em from voting "no" if tlley had so desired
TI1e proof is that 540,211 Gennans did so vote. Only an eightll as many,
however, as in the preceding year. In eight montlls, tllerefore, seven
eighths of tJ1e previous opponents had been won over to Adolf Hitler.
William Shirer, who had watched the electoral process with ajaundiced
eye, had to admit: "In my opinion, and I was able to observe the progress
of the elections fron1 one end of tlle Reich to the other, there is no room
for doubt: Adolf Hitler's show of strengtll was approved by an overwhelm-
ing majority."
In Paris, the leading light of l'Oeuvre, the No. 1 anti-Adolf Hitler news-
paper, could only write witll a waspish gloom: "One had above all the im-
pression that France would henceforth be considered as having little
importance in tlle international domain. She had let herself slide quietly
off tlle stage where Gennany was now going to take her place."
That was regrettable for Europe. France had had, and ought to have
kept, a position in Europe worthy of her genius and her past But the
democracy of the herd was fatal to her: nothing escaped its anarchy.
Great countries cannot be maintained in order, and above all cannot be
made to progress, if tlley have at tlleir disposal only parliaments recruited
blindly on the basis of ambition and greed, and expedient governments
that no sooner born are overturned. All in all, it takes a master builder,
one with great power over the people but not of the bogus kind; a man
who can put togetller a stable and competent administration and be given
time, so that he can see far and on a large scale; and who will not be sab-
ot.aged at every tum by disparate political parties mired in petty and im-
mediate concerns.
Even intelligent men like Flandin, or cunning and clever ones like
Laval, were powerless against this self-destructive system. M. Fland.in
would fall from power that very spring. Laval, too, would be swiftly
sacked; Laval, the man of tlle pact recently concluded with Stalin, whose
blessing ought to have saved him. The France of 1918 was collapsing. An-
other France was going to come on stage.
CHAPTER
ll DUCE DROPS IN ON THE FUEHRER
he French Prime Minister Blum's social and racial hatred

was clearly meant to apply to anything near or far that
might have an odor of fascism about it. After the fascism of
Adolf Hitler, the other fascism that Blum was dead set on
destroying was that of Mussolini and which was all the
more execrable in that the Duce was a former socialist, the most tal-
ented socialist of the 20th century. Mussolini had understood in good
time that Marxism, which in its latent stage is called socialism and in its
virulent Communist stage-with its dogma of class warfare-led the
working masses into fruitless struggles and resulted in economic anar-
chy and political powerlessness.
There, too, the comparison between the grandiose achievements of
Mussolini's fascism and the floundering of the French Popular Front of
1936 was both striking and edifying. "If I were Italian, I would be a Fas-
cist," Churchill had written. Every foreign observer traveling in Italy,
whatever his convictions, could not fail to recognize the magnitude of
Mus.5olini's achievements. The Duce had given dignity to the life of the
Italian people, unity and pride to the nation; and to the millennial Rome
of the she-wolf, a new empire, as in the times of Augustus and Trajan.
Ever since his acces.5ion to power, Blum had pounced on the recent
Ethiopian invasion, seeking sanctions by the League of Nations against
Italy to punish the Duce for having undertaken, in 1935, to conquer that
backward counb.y.
452 I HITI.EH DEMOCRAT
For decades Italy, lacking fe1tile soil, had been co1npelled to send nlil-
lions of inunigr-ants to foreign lands, so1netilues as many as 400,000-
500,000 in a single year. h1Stead of continuing, like the fonner democratic
politicirulS, to look on unconcen1edly while hordes of his ill-fated co1npa-
triots1 divested of everything, filled cargo ships and e1nigrated to the
slunlS of New York, Caracas, or Buenos Aires, Mussolini had decided to
find tJ1e1n land where tl1ey would finally be able to earn tl1eir bread with-
out leaving ho1ne. It was in Ethiopia that he had decided to give tl1e Ital-
irulS tlle possibility of expaI1Sion. Etltlopia in 1935 was still three-quarters
savage, ill goven1ed, ill fed, conupt and involved in tl1e slave trade. Fifty
years later, returned to its natural state, Ethiopia relapsed into tlle most
horrible fantlne. A realistic socialist, Mussolini wanted to assure his peo-
ple of work in so1netltlng other than factory e1nployinent. He had already
transforn1ed Libya, on tl1e other side of the Mediterranean, across from
Sicily. Carrying civili1.ation to distant shores and producing wealth and
,veil-being, saving local populatio11S fro1n anarchy and hunger, was in ac-
cord with the old t.radition of Rome, of tlle ancient Urbs, creator of culture
and econonuc develop1nent for centuries, from the Seine to tlle Ganges,
fron1 the Danube to the Nile.
What could M. Bltm1 find to get indignant about in seeing tlle Italian
people fig]1ting for their bread, while ensuring that of the natives at the
san1e titne? The whole history of the people of Israel, of tl1eir kings and
their prophets, had been nothing but a long series of conquests, of egoistic
conquests by force, in which the conquered peoples were invariably put
to the sword in the name of Jehovah, who was always ready to take tl1e
blame.
No race has ever boasted as the Jewish race has-in their holy
books-of so many genocides. The rise of Israel tllroughout its history
has ever and always been at tlle cost of blood, often the blood of inno-
cents. The Bible is the most aweso1ne dictionary ever compiled of the
massacres of invaded peoples, ruled in the naine of tlle Altnig]1ty, as if He
had personally mandated a dozen tribes of Israel to hold the entire world
in tmquestioning submission.
And what, too, could tile democratic states co1nplain about when tl1ey
had long been fat with foreign possessions?
All the great countries before Mussolini's Italy had carved out colonies
and provinces for themselves with guns, as Great Britain did in Ireland or
the mdies; France in Algeria or Tongking; the United States in the Antilles
IL DUCE DROPS IN ON THE FUEHRER I 453
or Philippines, Mexico, Central America and even out in the middle of

the Pacific. Italy alone, while she was sorrowfully to release millions of
undernourished to the three Americas, had not had the right to find them
a free space in lands until then subjected to savagery and despotism.
Aut11entic socialists ought to have been the first to endeavor to pro-
cure for tlleir poor huddled masses the land that would pennit them to
live. The colonial system that reseived the riches of the world for a few
privileged countries was the shame of the early years of the 20th century.
That a handful of Belgians (less than 30,000 all told) were exclusively oc-
cupying the inunense Congo, while every year half a million Italians de-
parted desperate and hungry for inhumane metropolises, ought to have
revolted every honest socialist Social passion is valid only when it is in-
ternational. But every Marxist party had egoistically arranged private
hunting rights for its own individual country. 'Ille Internatiunale was only
a song howled out at the end of meetin~. This antisocial deviation of
Marxism could only become accentuated when the aggravation of an ide-
ological hatred was added to it. That was the case in 1935 and 1936 with
Italy's popular expansion.
The Italian case would be revelatory of the fanaticism that can devour
politicians once their national interests or ideological peevishness are
concerned.
On Oct 30, 1935, six 1nonths before the election of M. Blum and his So-
cialist Popular Front in France, Mussolini had decided to make Ethiopia
-ancient possession in Africa of the mythical descendants of Solomon
and the queen of Sheba of which the ancient world had often dreamed
and which Strabo and Ptolemy had already inscribed in their atlases
under tile name of Akswn-part of the Italian lmperium. The history of
the misfortunes of these regions had been a long one. For centuries the
people there had cut each other's tlrroats-J'ewish converts, Christians,
Muslims-while trafficking briskly in slaves.
Next the Portuguese had founded families there. Then they got exter-
nlinated. The Jesuits, enterprising as pirates, had settled there in tum
after having converted a local kinglet. They, too, had been thrown out
ratller promptly. The countcy was crawling with ras, tl1at is, with petty
chiefs. In 1855, one of them named Kassa, who was not lacking in ap-
petite, modestly proclailned himself "ldng of kings."
The capitalist West, on hearing talk of this distant land, had begun to
lick its chops. The British, always in the forefront when it was a matter
of self-interest, rapidly 1noved in. It was the tune when iinperialists and
financiers ,vere engaged in digging tl1e Suez Canal at tl1e cost of tile lives
of tens of tl1ousands of the natives. Everyone wanted to set up their
guns in proxinlity to that remunerative waterway: the French at Obock
and Djibouti, and tlle British at Aden on the other side. The 'l\trks had
occupied Harar.
11\e "king of kings" at tl1e tiine was named Menelik. He feared tl1e sup-
port of tlle strong powers and sought tlle collaboration of the weak. Witil
tl1at principle as his point of departure, he had selected Italy, politically
just out of tl1e shell, and had given her not just tl1e ownersllip of Eritrea
but a protectorate over tl1e whole of his country. The peasants of Tuscany
and Calabria had no more tl1an begun to dig and cultivate and lay out a
few roads, however, when Menelil<, overflowing with gratitude, ignomin-
iously extenninated tilem, on the 1st of March 1898, at Aduwa Italy
would not forget tllat disaster. Meanwhile, the French and the English,
passionate rivals, had been employing their intrigues on the road from
tlle Nile and from Fashoda
The last ms, or king of kings, Ras Tafari, is well known. In 1930 he
had rebaptized himself Haile Selassie, otherwise called the negus. He
played at being civilized. Thinking to attain tile summit of civilization by
so doing, he had appointed 30 senators and 60 deputies who did not have
a thing to say about anything, but democracy had thus conquered anotiler
country. The negus turned up in Geneva at the Palace of the League of Na-
tions wearing kilts and culottes and canying an wnbrella The slave traffic
was flourishing in his countryjust the same. The return from tllis pleasant
business was excellent The palace of the negus was crammed with treas-
ures, notably solid gold chandeliers, each weighing 60 pounds.
The Italians, who had withdrawn from Aduwa to their neighbormg
colony of Eritrea, continued to keep an eye on tile lands of which they
had been wspos.5e5.5ed. Deprived of space, why should they not dethrone
this medieval king of kings? Had not the French and tile English toppled
20 sovereigns from tlleir thrones at Tunis, Rabat, Algiers, Tananarive, in
the Indies and in China, all of them just as crowned as the negus? The
latter, moreover, in 1930 had just brutally crushed his tribes and scattered
them to the north of the Blue Nile.
For more than 20 centuries Italy of the caesars-and the popes-had
brought civilization, order and efficiency everywhere. l\ilussolini ought to
have been commended for wishing to take up that age-old tradition again
II... DUCE DROPS IN ON THE FUEHRER I 455
runong primitive peoples to whom tl1e high traditions of work and culture
of ancient Rome could only bring benefit
But it could not be thought that an Italian fascism would be able to
b1ing well-being and stability to backward, small African tribes. Fascism,
be it in Addis Ababa, Rome or Berlin, could only be an accursed thing to
be destroyed. In order to conciliate M~olini, Laval, with his calculating
cynicism tinged with humor, had given him a cautious go-ahead before he
set his colonizing operation under way. In collaboration with the British
Secretruy Samuel Hoare, Laval had worked out more or l~ in secret an
"ingenious and well-balanced" plan of conciliation.
It kept up appearances, so dear to the hearts of the Geneva crowd. As
a matter of fact, it gave Mu~olini what he needed: his African tenitory of
Eritrea would be enlarged by the addition of the Tigre region; Somalia
would be doubled; Ethiopia itself would be entn.1sted to Italy as "a zone
of colonization" under the fonnal sovereignty of the negus. The negus
hiniself was nothing. He ought just to swallow the pill and accept, Laval
said to himself. "After all, it can't be helped about Ethiopia," the two plot-
ters had munnured, for keeping tl1e friendship of an anti-Gennan Italy
came before keeping the negus's slave traders in busin~. Laval had a1.:
ready drafted the text of the preamble of the motion which, in agreement
with Hoare, he was going to present for the agreement of the League of
Nations: "'I11e govenunent of the United Kingdom and the French govern-
ment will use their influence at Geneva to win the acceptance of his
majesty the Emperor Haile Selassie and the ratification of the League of
Nations for the constitution in southern Ethiopia of a zone of economic
expansion and settlement reserved to Italy."
This intelligent plan would not get very far. Hoare had been betrayed
in London by a high anti-fascist and anti-Hitler official, Sir Robert Vansit-
tart, who had informed a Paris newspaper that was rabidly anti-Mu~lini
and specialized in pr~ scandals of the Anglo-French agreen1ent Three
days later tl1e Paris paper L'Oeuvre published the text of the plan and au-
tomatically torpedoed it "The circulation of the paper is rising," shame-
lessly declared the owner of the Paris daily, a n1an named Raud, "and
that's all I ask" Hoare no longer had any choice but to resign the next
day. Laval resigned as well a few days later.
When Blum moved into the Palais Matignon, the seat of the presidency
of the French Council of Ministers, Mu$olini's troops had entered Addis
Ababa, the capital of the negus (or, more exactly, the ex-negus), a few
4.56 I HITLER DEMOCRAT
days before. No one had ilnagined that in six months Italy would be able
to bring off such a victory. Etltlopia was an immense country, wild and un-
even, with savage n1ount.ain peaks like Mount Digna rising to 1nore than
3,000 yards in altitude, or even to more than 4,000 yards, like Mount
Gowna (4,231 yards) and Mount Dedgian (4,500 yards): obstacles worse
tl1an those Hannibal or Napoleon met in crossing the Alps. Dangerous
gorges everywhere. No roads except faintly marked trails. Only one pass-
able main road to tl1e approaches of Addis Ababa The anti-fascist pre~
of tl1e whole world scoffed, depicting a Mus.solini involved for years in
tl1at Etltlopian adventure about 2,500 miles from Italian territory.
It would take him six or seven years, some predicted. Others upped it
to 20 years. But if it dragged on, Mussolini was lost. For all the imperialists
and leftists on the planet, united by financial interests in some cases and
by hatred in others, had been brought together in Geneva for the purpose
of imposing sanctions on Italy pursuant to Article 12 of the Geneva Pact.
Mussolini had not had his campaign under way for more than eight
days when the sanctions had been voted, on Oct. 11, 1935. If M~olini
were to take not 20 but even merely one or two years to make his way
across Etlliopia, the international blockade of his country would ham-
string him and force him to give up. It was a race against time that Mus-
solini had begun on the 3rd of October 1935, when he advanced with four
colunms of troops debouching from the north (Eritrea) and from the
south (Somalia). At any moment he ran the risk of having the British cut
the umbilical cord of the Suez Canal, the long and narrow strip of water
through which all his logistical support, men, munitions, motorized equip-
ment and provisions had to pass. To be sure, Mus.solini had built up stocks
on the spot and in good time. But if the war were prolonged they would
be exhausted and he would not be able to renew them.
A considerable British fleet had taken a position between Italy and
the African shore, ready to intervene at the first order. It was the most
powerful fleet the British had ever assembled in the Mediterranean: 134
ships, more than 400,000 tons.
The Duce was going to see it through with genius. Contrary to all the
laws of strategy in force in 1935, he mounted an almost totally motorized
campaign. Several thousand Italian trucks had been brought to the site.
And armored cars. And even 100 tanks. In this country without roads,
such a deployment seemed to everyone to be mad. Without all his motor-
ized equipment, however, Mussolini would have arrived too late and
would never have been able to capture the 400,000 square miles stretched
out before him. He was nevertheless going to cross this fantastic countzy
not just on account of his motorized troops, but because as an old de-
scendant of the Caesars he had rediscovered a tactic dear to the Roman
legions, that of opening their own roads.
His anny of 500,000 men included-the world would learn it with
great astonishment-100,000 workers. Massed in veritable divisions,
100,000 common laborers and masons advanced at the head of the
colwnns, armed with shove1s, with picks, with axes and with sticks of
dynamite. They would be the true conquerors in this campaign, worthy
ofAlexander advancing to the Indus. The hundreds of miles of roads over
which the army advanced would have to be opened by these workers,
blasting rock from the mountains and building highways of durable ma-
terials that would never cave in under the weight of the tanks and trucks,
or the discharge of the enonnous African rains that followed the oppres-
sive tropical Sun. They had to scale mountains and at times cut roadways
through at an altitude of more than 9,000 feet
These workers had to build retaining walls sometimes hundreds of
yards long and 20 yards high. These heroic men would be seen to work
for 36 solid hours carrying 300 cubic yards of material on their backs to
the top of the Tenneber Pass (3,150 yards in altitude) to enable the mo-
torized cohunn that was making a run on Addis Ababa to get through.
The courage and tenacity of the Italian workers were surely to be seen in
this fabulous labor. Without their modest heroism, the Ethiopian cam-
paign would have been impossible. But it is to the glocy of Mussolini to
have conceived, as an old Roman, that the mason would open the way for
tl1e warrior.
On the other hand, the Ethiopian troops were more numerous-
500,000 men-than those of Mussolini. Even more so: Amillion additional
combatants could be mobilized on the spot by the negus. These Ethiopian
natives were famous for their fury in combat They would fight with un-
deniable but unmethodical courage. And mind is stronger than muscle
evecywhere and always. Haile Selassie had only hordes at his command.
Mussolini had worked out an intelligent and inventive plan. No one would
have to undergo the trial of advancing on foot The trucks (at times 1,000
of them) carried the infantry. The dragoons and lancers were preceded by
armored units forcing the way through.
The air force bombed all the centers of resistance. A perl'ect system
4S8 I HITLER DEMOCRAT
of radio conununication assw-ed coordination of the units. On the other

hand, tl1e Ethiopian tribes, despite their valor, did not 1neasure up: poorly
anned, without radio, witllout tanks and having only discarded planes
that had been pahned off on tl1e1n by English traders at a fat price. The
need for an hupeccable supply service had fired Mussolini's ilnagi.nation:
closely follo,\rulg tl1e troops were cohu1u1s of tn1cks with 1nore than
100,000 pounds of cruu1ed goods.
A sensational innovation wortl1y of a movie co1nedy scene: in order
that tl1e troops might have fresh 1neat to eat, Mussolini had live bullocks
and calves and pigs parachuted down to the moving columns. It was im-
perative to have water as ,veil in tlli.s tropical land, and tlley did not count
on tlle chance of getting it fro1n streanlS. As 1nany as 75 tank trucks at a
tilne, canying 75,000 quarts of water, daily acco1npanied the con1batants.
Every soldier received about a quart of fresh water every day.
The people at Geneva, totally devoid of ilnagination, went on inter-
nlinably entangling themselves in the ju1uble of their sanctions while
l\1ussolini pushed his anuy, at ever greater speed, toward Addis Ababa,
tlle goal they had n1eant to keep him fro1n by depriving his country of
ra,v n1aterials and supplies. Mussolini's speed and the almost certainty
of an inuninent victory by his annies quickly datnped the ardor of the
League of NatiollS anti-Fascists. The sanctiollS, it is true, prohibited the
exportation to Italy of anns, munitions and war matetiel. But if Mus-
solini hurried, his stocks would suffice and he would have no need of
supplies from abroad.
The exportation of Italian goods to other countries had also been p~
hibited, to cut off all Mussolini's foreign currency funds. But breaches
were quickly opened, notably on the Gennan side, where it was immedi-
ately felt a great advantage would be gained by pleasing the ltaliallS and
preparing an initial rapprochement Moreover, the sanctions were oozing
with hypocrisy. Ultimately the only absolute prohibition was tl1e funlish-
ing of aluminum to Italy: but alumintun was one thing Italy produced in
great abundance.
The real sanction, the one that could have put a damper on Mus-
solini, had consisted in depriving Italy of petroleum. That she lacked al-
together. But the United States was not a member of the League of
NatiollS. U.S. magnates had immediately smelled big business and, be-
cause of their traffic, the sale of petroleum finally remained free. These
sanctiollS, which in the beginning seemed made of steel, in a fe,v
Benito Mussolini had been an opponent of Hitler until 1935, being concerned about
German expansion into Austria. However, the campaign which the Allied powers
waged against Mussolini, after Italy's colonization of Ethiopia and his expansionist
plans in Europe, pushed Mussolini and Italian fascism into the National Socialist camp.
Here, Hitler and Mussolini ride together in 1937. NEWSCOM
months becrune 1nere papier-mache.

TI1eir final result would be twofold. Mussolini, for 10 years a friend of
the Allies, but disgusted by their hypocrisy and their egois1n of the rich,
was going to 1nove away fro1n them and pass over to the Adolf Hitler
crunp that up to then he had loathed. In the second place, compelled by
tl1e tlu-eat of the sanctions to get things in Ethiopia over with in a huny,
Mussolini had reso1ted to 1nassive bon1bardlnents in order to open tl1e
way 1nore quickly. Tens of tl1ousands of Etlliopians had tl1us died who all
would have survived if the Duce had been pennitted to advance without
haste across the chaotic country where the negus exercised but a feeble
and questionable autholity and where any Italiru1 initiative could only
have been beneficial. It was in the interest of all to aid Mussolini instead
of heinously sabotaging his actions, as was atten1pted-though vainly-
at Geneva
Entire regions of Etlliopia were openly hostile to the negus, such as
the province of Goggirun, where the great slave razzias, a very special
source of revenue of the negus's en1pire, were carried out. The ras of
Goggirun detested Haile Selassie. The Italians entered his lands without
firing a shot after having conquered, in heat of 108 degrees Fahrenheit in
tlle shade, tlle town of Gondar and tl1en the wonderful lake where the
Blue Nile rises. Anotller Etlliopian ras, Gen. Taffari, had ventured to ex-
pres.5 his disagreement with tlle negus. That idyllic king of kings, the idol
of so many sensitive souls at Geneva, had had the protesting ras flogged
in the public square of Addis Ababa and afterward made to parade the
streets in gaudy feminine rags.
The negus himself, so valiant when it came to use of the wlup, was
much less so when facing the Italian troops. Actually he had not been
seen ruiywhere since the start of the campaign. He had remained shut up
imperturbably in his palace. When, a month before the end, he finally had
to make an appearance at tlle front, it was only to flee shamefully after a
week and to run and hide in tlle mountains. He would reappear in Addis
Ababa on May 1, 1936, only to remove his enormous fortune and embark
witll it and all his smalah [Arab chief's retinue] in a special train that
would take him out of Ethiopia to Djibouti. On that day the world would
get to see tlle people for whom the manipulators of Geneva, with tlleir
sanctions, had very nearly destroyed Italy.
Etlliopia, represented in Geneva as a marvelously democratic cow1try,
was a country so benighted, so little civilized, that the negus had no more
than cleared out before its savagery was revealed in all its crudity. From
May 1, 1936, before the Italians anived, the capital of Addis Ababa be-
came a battlefield of killers and thieves. Historian Benoist-Mechin relates:
Anarchy and terror rule the city. The squaring of accounts

among the natives and the murders are no longer counted. Every-
thing is ransacked, pillaged and demolished, beginning with tlle
hnperial Palace. The treasUJ.Y, where there are considerable gold
reserves, is the object of a regular siege, after which the pillagers
kill each other over the division of the spoils. . . . Fearing to be
massacred by the Ethiopians, the few whites living in Addis
Ababa take refuge in the legations. The latter also become objec-
tives toward which the Abyssinians turn their hatred. They have
to be barricaded and converted into forts. A veritable manhunt is
going on in tlle streets and anyone with a light complexion is sav-
agely struck down.
Such were these darling boys of the Geneva democracies, for whom,
out of hatred for Fascism, the peace of the West had been put in extreme
danger; moreover, Mussolini-furious at seeing that those he had until
then believed his friends had done everything to starve his country-had
been thrown back into Adolf Hitler's arms.
But tl1e topper would come in Addis Ababa The British, who had been
so dead set on voting the sanctions and demanding tl1at Geneva prevent
the Italians fro1n reaching Addis Ababa-at the instigation of their fire-
brand, Secretary Eden-were now going to run to the Italians crying for
help, begging them to speed up the invasion of the city and save their
compatriots. Benoist-Medlin continues in his account:
On the morning of May 4, the situation has become so alanning

that Sir Sidney Barton, the British minister, acting on behalf of his
colleagues of the diplo1natic corps, addresses an SOS to Marshal
Badoglio begging him to accelerate his march on the city and oc-
cupy it as quickly as possible.
The same afternoon, very amused by the British supplication, the Ital-
ians entered the capital of the ex-negus, carrying their rifles by tl1e sling.
On May 9, their troop columns had come together throughout the terri-
tory. Rome once again possessed an empire. Mussolini had truly earned
the right to mark his flags with the age-old fasces of the lictors. The
democracies, after this foolishness, ought to have tried to repair the dam-
age as soon as possible and to get the ltalo-Anglo-French ship back on an
even keel somehow or oilier. Some Britishers who were less passionate
than Marxists like Blum, and for whom a fact ever and always counted for
more than a lord mayor, had finally understood that tl1ey had gone com-
pletely astray. Churchill personally admitted:
Her Majesty's Govem1nent has imprudently championed a

great world cause. It has placed itself at tlle head of 50 nations
whom it has urged on witll fine words.... Its policy for a long
time has been dictated by tl1e desire to satisfy certain powerful
currents of opinion that have appeared here at home rather than
by concern for European realities. By alienating Italy, it has co1n-
pletely upset the equilibritnn of the continent without obtaining
tlle slightest advantage for Abyssinia
England ,vould in tlle end reluctantly recognize the Italian empire, but
not tn1til 1938, when it would be much too late.
As for the Marxist Blum, who ought to have been able to get well out
of it, since he had not come to power until the very month in which the
conquest of Etlliopia had definitely been achieved, he would continue to
act as Italy's most rabid enemy. Mussolini had scarcely any illusions.
When AM. Bertrand interviewed him, as he had previously interviewed
Adolf Hitler, the Duce had answered: "What do you want me to say to a
French journalist? You have just given yourselves a government whose
principal aim is to fight against fascism. Well, go ahead and fight."
Then, gaining control of himself, he had continued: "Do you know the
present French leaders well enough to give them a message? ... Yes?
Then tell Uon Blum that I wish to deal with France independently of his
domestic administration." Recalling his personal role in Italy's entry into
tlle war in 1915, he had added:
I had Italy enter the war on the side of France.... I love your
country and fll promise you something specific in exchange.
Through your boasting and your weakness, you have let the
Rhineland be reoccupied. The Germans are going to fortify it. ...
By passing through the Piedmont with the assistance of the Ital-
ian anny, you can go and defend Czechoslovakia and that's the
only chance you have left. I shall defend Czechoslovakia with
you. You will defend Austria with me. There is no other way to
halt the conquest of Central Europe by Germany. Tell that to
Blum. I'll sign a treaty tomorrow, if he wishes.
It is plain that despite the rebuffs and insults, Mussolini had not yet
completely decided, after the conquest of Ethiopia, to go over to Adolf
Hitler's side. Giving the Allies a second chance remained a possibility
and Mussolini was offering a helping hand. Blum spurned it contemp-
tuously. He would not even bother to answer by so much as the cold for-
mality of a diplomatic rejection. He charged-that and no more-a high
official of the Foreign Affairs Ministry, M. Massigli, to let Italy know the
reasons which motivated his refusal. They were a masterpiece of dem-
ocratic double-talk.
"There is no question but that the electoral commitments made by M.
Blum to the Narbonne socialists will not allow him to take the matter
under consideration." It's enough to make one cry. How can there be a fa-
naticism so narrow-minded? The equilibrium of Europe was to be upset
to please a few Narbonne voters?
However, that's the way it would be.
Political truckling to voters hit a new high that day. And anti-fascist ha-
tred had appeared in all its polite splendor. "The matter went no further,"
writes Benoist-Mechin in conclusion. "Nothing more was said about it."
Far from clearing the air, as the Duce had hoped, his offer seemed to
exasperate the leftist parties. The Paris press raged against him and
heaped insults on him. And now at last Mussolini drew the proper lesson
from this hostility.
Judging that he could not expect much from France, he replied with
more and more virulent words to the attacks under which he was coming.
Since France, England and the United States refused the hand he ex-
tended to them, there was nothing left for him but to turn to the only
country that had offered him its help in his hour of peril. The turnabout
began on the 24th and 25th of October, 1936, when Count Ciano, the Ital-
ian minister of foreign affairs, crune to Berchtesgaden and to Berlin,
where he proceeded to "a full exchange of ideas" with the Fuehrer.
By his anti-fascist hatred, M. Blum had just let France lose an excep-
tionally important ally. When the hour of the Anschl,uss sounded, Paris
would find the access closed to a border that had been wide open to her
for 20 years.
Leon Blum, the first Jewish Prime Minister of France, was the product of the French
popular front, an alliance of French co mmunists and left-wing capitalist politicians that
was formed to oppose French nationalist movements inspired by German National
Socialism. Ironically, the Blum government's anti-nationalist policies led to a weaken-
ing of the French military and contributed mightily to the defeat and occupation of
France by the German military in 1940. w 1K1PEDIA
CHAPTER
LEON BLUM: COLLECTOR OF FASCISMS
he Spanish Prente Popular had flopped economically and so-

cially just as badly as the Front Po'J)'Ulaire of France, and
sooner. From 1931 to 1936, the Spanish Republic, pink at the
beginning but later blood red, had shown itself to be ex-
tremely competent when it came to burning down churches
(32 in a single night in Malaga) and to assassinating or having assassi-
nated hundreds of its opponents (notably the rightist leader, Sefior Calvo
Sotelo). But the workers had waited in vain for Marxism to better their
lot During five years of de1nocracy they had marked time in misery. A
printer like Carillo, the future leader of the Communist Party, earned two
pesetas a daY, not a centirno more, on the eve of the day when Gen. Fran-
cisco Franco, tired of so much disorder, launched an assault against the
"Republican" regilne, which was as talkative as a cockatoo but bloody
and impotent
From July 18, 1936, a fierce combat raged. Every Spaniard was forced
into one group or the other according to the geographical division of the
civil war. Brothers fought against brothers, idealists against idealists, be-
cause Spain has a noble soul and thus idealists abounded in both camps.
It had taken only a year for tl1e war of the F'rente Popular to be trans--
fonned into a war of the USSR. As early as 1937 the tanks, planes, and the
political commissars from Moscow were in control of the terrain in the
republican zone.
It is false to say that Adolf Hitler from the very beginning had sup-
ported Franco. It is true tl1at in tl1e first month, in North Africa, Franco
had received tl1e support of 10 of Mussolini's cargo planes. But Adolf
Hitler, at tlte beginning, had stayed out of it Hitler was not asked for help
by Franco m1til after the arrival in Barcelona, Valencia and Bilbao of mas-
sive shipments of anns from the USSR and from Blum's "Popular Front"
in France.
It was at Bayreuth, where he was attending the great Wagner festival,
that Adolf Hitler received tlte first emissaries of the Spanish Caudillo.
And it was not until after having weighed the fundamentals of the prob-
lem for several hours that he decided to grant assistance that would be
of high quality, to be sure, but that always remained limited (amom1ting
to one percent of the forces Franco had at his disposal). The recital of the
atrocities committed by the Spanish Marxists (e.g. 8,600 priests and nuns
m3.$acred, tens of thousands of suspects shot without a trial, tortures
worthy ofTurkish janissaries), and the danger, too, of seeing a formidable
military extension of the USSR installed in the southwest of Europe that
would supplement the anti-Adolf Hitler bloc of the "Popular Front" of
France, convinced Adolf Hitler to send to Franco's Spain, a few weeks
after the beginning of hostilities, a contingent of planes and tanks with
their crews-a few thousand men in all. He did it calmly, as much t.o give
training to his new forces in a real war terrain as to support an anti-Con1-
munist regime that in his view was too clerical and too conservative.
In any case, Adolf Hitler's participation was never anything but a drop
in the bucket alongside the red sea of reinforcements provided by the So-
viets, by the French Marxists, and by the thousands of ruthless Commu-
nist combatants of the "International Brigades." It was to them that the
F'rent,e Popular owed having been able to smvive for such a long tin1e.
From November of 1936 onward, it was this voluntary support from
abroad which beyond any doubt had saved Communist Madrid. And then
other, and at times very m1expected, aid and comfort had been given the
Prerue Popular. Thus we had been afforded the spectacle of Cardinal
Verdier, the archbishop of Paris, supporting the Red Republic like any
Pantin or Saint-Denis bruiser.
"To be sure," the unctuous prelate had declared, "a republican victory
will deprive the Church of Spain of a few of its ancient privileges, but it
will ensure it a more stable position."
It was t.o Stalin's immediate interest that the Spanish war be pro-
longed, that it provide the bridge t.o the decisive showdown between
LEON BLUM: COLLECTOR OF FASCISMS I 467
Conununism and Hitlerism. For Stalin, the carnage in Spain was his own
personal fight. It was for him that half a million poor devils of the Span-
ish left would perish. He kept the head of the Frent.e Popular above water
for three years because his strategy demanded it. But not without filling
his pockets liberally on tl1e way, having Madrid entrust him with all the
gold of the Bank of Spain and the jewels stolen from the private safe.(]e-
posit boxes, not a milligram of which would ever reappear. Countries
were only pawns on his chessboard. He used them, one after another, or
one against another, according to his needs.
He 1nade no effort to conceal his cruel eyes with their glint of yellow.
In the course of a luncheon in Paris, on Sept. 8, 1936, one of his delegates
had gone so far as to say sardonically to the most important Jew in
France: "See here, dear M. Rothschild, we hate Gennany so nu1ch that
we are capable of one day allying ourselves with her to force the French
and the British-who will otl1erwise be tempted to yield forever-to
wage war against her and destroy her for us."
It was true. It was for him and for him alone tl1at the Europeans
would later wipe each other out, from 1939 to 1945. The USSR was the
great supplier to the Spanish republic of the anns and materiel that per-
nutted the prolongation for three bloody years of horrible carnage from
wllich Spain, whatever the result of the civil war, could only emerge
bled dry. This conflict was exactly what Stalin wanted and would last
until a few months before World War II, at the end of which-with both
sides exhausted-the way would be open for tl1e Comn1unists to ntle
half of Europe.
Tllis prospect of a generalized war did not in the least frighten the
"Marxist and Jew" Leon Blum, who would have sacrificed France and all
of Europe for the sake of his racial hatred. One Jew setting foot in Berlin
again was of much more concern to him than the lives of 10,000 peasants
from Beauce or Narbonne who, when all was said and done, were only
Frenclunen. Directly or indirectly Blum provided very important mnom1ts
of materiel to the Frent.e Pqpvlar, and especially aircraft that France her-
self moreover dangerously Jacked. Later, when it became in1prudent to af-
front the International Supervisory Commission, he would make it
possible for an enonnous Soviet military traffic destined for Conununist-
republican Spain to be carried on with a fleet that though entirely Soviet
was sailing under French camouflage. Secret unloading docks were re-
served for tl1ese ships in the vicinity of Bordeaux, and from there hun-
dreds of trucks loaded witl1 Soviet materiel left for Spain without any
kind of inspection. Irrefutable revelations of this have been published by
tl1e son of tl1e top French Couununist leader, Maurice Thorez.
Gen. Gatuelin hiinself has admitted the extensiveness of this collabora-
tion of tl1e Soviets, tl1e F'ront Populaire and the Frent,e Popula,1": "It is cer-
tain tllat a great deal of 1nateriel from various places and above all from
Russia was shipped across France. Despite the existence of an Interna-
tional Supervisory Commission, it may be supposed that the civil authori-
ties kept tl1eir eyes closed, no doubt in accordance with secret orders."
TI1at collaboration had gone well beyond the mere delivery of anns to
tlle F'rent,e PopuJ,ar. Under the pretext of preventing the Germans from
establishing themselves in Spain-which never entered Adolf Hitler's
mind-as well as the Italians -who despite Franco's victory took care
not to keep a single square meter of Iberian territory-quite specific plans
for 1nilitary intetvention were drawn up by the F'ront PO'[J'Ulaire. These
plans even envisioned landings in the Balearics and in Morocco, as has
been established by an official and secret record of the meeting of the
Permanent Committee of National Defense held on March 16, 1938, under
tlle chainnanship of Blum. Gen. Gamelin himself published the text of
tllese minutes in his memoirs entitled Servir.
Here is tlle gist of tllern:
Leon Blum, president of the council, says: "What would it take for us
to intervene in Spain? How could we back up an ultimatum to Gen.
Franco to this effect 'If within 24 hours you have not renounced the sup-
port of foreign forces, France will consider herself free to act and will re-
serve the right to take whatever measures of intervention she judges
necessary'?"
Gen. Gamelin, national defense chief of staff, replied: "If we wanted to
play that game, we should need a million men. We have not anticipated a
separate mohiliz.ation for the southwest."
Paul Boncour, minister of foreign affairs: "What would be the effect on
Spain of an operation against Spanish Morocco? Would it be enough t.o
rescue the government faction?"
Gen. Gamelin, again: "Such an operation would have a great effect on
morale; it would put important centers in our hands."
Thus, in order to support Spain's Communists and Soviet agents, a
French general-Blum's military right hand-was ready to go to war
against Morocco. Gamelin even added: "It [the operation] would require
a partial mobilization ofAlgeria" Morocco was not enough. Gamelin and

Blu1n were ready to mobilize the Algerians. Front Popul.aire had in mind
an operation to aid F'rente PopuJ.ar on its Mediterranean seaboard.
Paul Boncour, French minister of foreign affairs, said, "What would we
have to consider in an operation against the Balearlcs?" Vice Admiral Dar-
lan, navy chief of staff, replied, "That would be a large-scale operation re-
quiring land forces equivalent to a division."
Leon Blum, president of the Council, said in addition: "Would it be
possible to intensify the aid provided to Spain without milita.Iy inteiven-
tion?" Gen. Gamelin replied, "That would involve disanning French forces
and for a very chancy result, since the [Spanish] government forces are
quite incapable of managing."
If Leon Blum's Front Populaire did not disembark in Morocco or the
Balearics, it was not because they were not burning to join forces with the
army of the Frente Popular, it was because in the view of the specialists
of the French general staff, the Spanish republican forces were "incapable
of managing."
Daladier, minister of war, asks: "What would be Gennany's reaction
and Italy's in the event that we should inteivene in Spain?"
And Leon Blum, president of the council: "Would they consider it a
casus belli?"
Leger, secretary general of the ministry of foreign affairs: "Beyond the
slightest doubt."
Daladier: "Such an inteivention, not motivated by any new develop-
ments, would put us at the risk of being all alone against Gennany and
Italy with only so-so support from a distant and weakened Russia, and
without any assurance at all of Great Britain's assistance."
These warriors were not lacking in courage. It was only their means
tl1ey had doubts about
At the end of the discussion, Gamelin delivered an official note (No. 11-
D.N.), which he attached to the minutes, on the subject of the conse-
quences "of grave importance" that might be presented by the reaction of
the Germans and Italians to French operations in Morocco or the Balearics.
The principal points are as follows: 1. Consequences at sea: The naval
bases available to the enemy navies would have to be reckoned with.
2. Consequences in the air: Air forces based on Spanish tenitory would
be able to undertake missions in great force and at long range. 3. Conse-
quences on land: The possibility for our enemies of threat.ening the Pyre-
nean frontier and tl1e conconlitant need to tie up defense forces there.
It is quite clear: Grunelin ru1d Bltun did not reject ru1y of tl1e pro-re.
publican lru1dings in Nortl1 Africa and Majorca, but just as the 1nere entry
of tlu-ee Gennru1 battalions into tl1e Rhinelru1d in 1936 had terrified the
general staff, botl1 of tl1e1n were seized with panic facing the risks tl1at
nlight be presented by operations in the Afiican or European territories
of Franco's Spain. The last lines of Gru.nelin's conclusions are especially
eloquent: "It 1night prove insufficient n1erely to engage in tl1e tactic of
reprisals which would inunobilize considerable manpower. Under tllose
conditions we nlight eventually be led into seeking tlle destruction of
bases by direct inteivention, by 1neans of co1nbined operations at various
11
points on tl1e peninsula
The words are there: "destruction of bases"; "direct inteivention";
"co1nbined operations." All of the quotations reproduced above are ex-
tracts fron1 the text of tlle report, dated March 16, of the meeting on the
preceding day, March 15, 1938, of the Permanent Committee on National
Defense, and of the attached note, both signed by Gamelin hilnself and
both reproduced in exten.so in Gamelin's book: Servir, vol. II, pp. 322-331.
But how could tltls Front Populaire, tl1at out of Marxist hatred for
Franco tllreatened Morocco, the Balearics and even tl1e penilisula with
"landings" and "combmed operations:" how could it have pursued such
an aggressive policy at tlle risk of being militarily involved "fro1n tlle Rio
de Oro to the shores of the Levant"? It was not even in a position in 1936
to conduct a defensive policy. One would see it only too well in May of
1940. Using deception or provocation as a matter of policy may to some
extent be justified a posteriori if the end results obtained are positive.
The end results of the Frent.e Popular could not help but be extremely
negative. These macllinations against Franco in Spain would have no
more success than the intrigues against MUS&>lini. They would serve only
to push tlle Duce and tlle Caudillo closer to the Third Reich. It was Blum
himself who would bring about the anti-Marxist unification of tl1e Gennan
and Italian authoritarian regimes. It was he who would boot Mussolini
into Hitler's anns.
The political, social and financial disintegration tl1at Blum had inflicted
on France beginning with tlle month of May of 1936 had had catastropllic
repercussions on tl1e aimy. The production of tlle war materiel fact.ones
had declined substantially. The franc, which ought to have made possible
tlle purchase abroad of wanted mat:eriel, had crashed. Thousands of
LEON BLUM: COLLECTOR OF FASCJSMS I 471
young officers were de1noralized. Their leaders became the target of ever
more arrogant antimilitarist intrigues. Gamelin has personally recounted,
a bit appalled, an experience he had once while driving the president of
the Polish state, who was visiting France at that time. "When Gen. Smigly-
Rydz and I left Paris by car to go to the East, we were every so often
greeted by groups of men shaking their fists at us. I wasn't at all easy
about it."
Bltun was finnJy determined to sabotage the negotiations at Geneva
Hatred of Adolf Hitler and Fascism came before everything else. From the
first days of his victory at the polls, Blum had secretly indicated to the
head of the French army that if the government detennined to play the
game-or the comedy-of the Geneva proceedings, it would be only a
maneuver. "In reality," as Gamelin almost ingenuously avowed, "there
was sly 1nethod in that last point of view as there had been on the part of
our diplon1acy.
"On tl1e one hand," Gamelin continues, "it was imperative that the at-
titude taken not slow down our annament efforts. On the other hand, in
putting forward the categorical stipulation of an effective international in-
spection, not only for disarmament but even for the limitation of anna-
ments, that France was certain Nazi Gennany would r~ect, there was no
risk of winding up with a solution."
"Of course." It is perfectly clear: you make a proposal in order not to
co1ne to a conclusion. "Our proposal," Gmnelin wrote finally, "was at once
sincere [sicJand adroit, provided tl1at public opinion did not take at face
value what wasjust the game of politics."
Would the Blums and Gamelins be able to make out a valid case for
thus deceiving tl1e French people in the event of a change of attitude on
the part of the Third Reich? Whatever else may be said of the Gennans
of 1936, they were conciliatory vis-a-vis France to the point of naivete.
Despite tlle rebuff Minister Schacht had received from Blum, tlle "social-
ist and Jew," at tl1e time of his visit to Paris, the Gennan minister of war,
Gen. Rundstedt, had stepped into the breach, and, in an attempt to calm
the itch for wannongering tl1at mtimated the Front Populaire, had sent
the least Nazi of Gennany's military men to see Gamelin: Gen. Beck, the
same man who would be executed in July 1944 for having fomented tlle
final atte1npt to assassinate Adolf Hitler. Beck did everything po~ible to
reason with Gamelin.
"I am certain," he told him, "that I speak for the present leadership of
4i2 I HITLER DEMOCRAT
tt,e Reichswehr in assuring you that we have no desire for war against
you. You are convinced tl1at you would be the victor. We think that we
should be. That's tl,e way it is with good military men. But the final out-
co1ne would in any event b1ing about the ruin of Europe and the end of
our common civilization. Only Bolshevism would profit from it."
Germany's military attache in Paris, Gen. Kuehlenthal, would be no
le~ insistent to Gamelin. "Germany and the Fuehrer do not want war
with France. Between ourselves, it is finished. There is no hatred any
longer." He, too, had added, in virtual dismay at the thought of a new con-
flagration, "When Germany and France are down and out, R~ia, having
bided her time, will then step in."
The historical proofs of the admission by Blum and Gamelin of their
"political game" are still in existence. They may be found, clear as crystal,
in another official report of another meeting held by the Permanent Na-
tional Defense Committee with Blum, the president of the council, on
Saturday, May 19, 1937. It has been drafted under Order Number 418,
DN3. Here are the most significant statements:
Edouard Daladier, minister of national defense: "Everyone is in agree-
ment that French armaments are not to be reduced so long as the pro-
grams approved have not been carried out completely."
Delbos, minister of foreign affairs: "The British government fears that
our present position in support of rearmament may come to hinder rear-
mament if it were brought to believe that disarmament was near."
Blum, president of the council: "It is in our interest to push this busi-
ness (of fake disarmament) as much as possible without however putting
it into effect"
Marshal Petain: "If limitation were proposed to Germany today, she
would accept it immediately because of the immense advantage it would
give her."
Edouard Daladier, minister of national defense and of war: "Ger-
many has reached a level of force that she will find hard to exceed. We
can catch up to her and surp~ her, just as we have already done in
certain points."
Marshal Petain: "The question of limitations should not be broached
Wltil England and we ourselves have reached our maximum."
Leon Blum: "That is a condition sine qua wn."
The disc~ion in a nutshell: They would rearm to the limit under the
"clever" and above all remarkably hypocritical guise of an official quest
for disarrnrunent., knowing in advance -because they were flnnly deter-

mined to 1nake it so-"that it can not result in any concrete solutions.n
The Front Populaire, however, would never get beyond the all-talk
stage, not in 1936 nor afterward. The strikes, the occupying of factories,
the drop in the hours worked and the low production in military enter-
prises would nullify the bellicose plans expressed so cynically in the
course of these secret meetin~.
Gamelin, hard pressed by the Left, indecisive, a civil servant without
character, had meanwhile fallen completely into discredit Professor
Pierre Renouvin wrote: "Gamelin disperses and dilut.es. He feels comfort-
able with the vague and the uncertain." His closestcolleaguesjudged him
with a cruelty that is rather SUiprising in high military circles, where a
gilded cage had always been venerated like an ostensorium.
TI1e future Gen. Bauffre, serving on the army general staff just two
steps away from the office of Gamelin, would say of the latter and of his
aides: "The essential preoccupation of our commanders was the appear-
ance of the paperwork. ... The whole had just one force, tl1at of inertia."
Captain Zeller, who would become fan1ous in the Resistance and becon1e
the governor of Paris, minced n1atters even less: "Do you know Gen.
Gruuelin? ... Well, he's a nincompoop." On the other side, Adolf Hitler's
side, colonels were 40 years old. In France they were 60. Generals were
10 years older.
Gen. Pet.am was born 14 years, and Gen. Weygand three years, before
the war of 1870. But Marshal Goering, who put together the dreaded Luft-
waffe, was just 49 years old when Blum came to power. How was France
ever going to measure up if it came to war? Bragging and provocations
would no longer suffice on D-Day.
For Blum, this wony was only relative. The security he counted on
above everything else would surely come from Moscow. The Franco-So-
viet pact would get him out of it In the event of a brawl with Adolf Hitler,
the enormous Communist masses of the East would descend on Berlin.
The Czech allies would do tlle rest It was sooner said tllan done. What,
really, did these enormous armies of the USSR consist of? And how, in
case of need, would tlley intervene?
Those were the true questions tl1at someone responsible for the future
of France ought to have been asking from 1936 on. Blum, absorbed in his
Marxist., Senlitic hatred, had taken care not to raise tl1em. Events were
going to de1nand tlley be answered in full.
Mikhail Tukhachevsky was a marshal of the Soviet Union and an early Soviet Com-
munist who had led the Soviet attack on Poland during the Bolshevik Revolution,
which ended in the defeat of Soviet forces in July 1920. A rival of Stalin, he was ac,,
cused of plotting with the German government against Stalin and executed in 1937
at the start of the great purge of the Soviet military. The Russian government later
claimed it had executed Tukhachevsky in error as the result of false intelligence se-
cretly provided by the German government.
CHAPTER
HITlER AND TUKHACHEVSKY
dolf Hitler, analyzing Mikhail Tukhachevsky's worth, feared

it just as much as did Josef Stalin. For Tukhachevsky, all by
himself, because he had milita.ry genius, was a greater dan-
ger to Germany than a million muzhiks hurled at Koenigs-
berg in a herd. Without this absolutely first-class military
leader, the enormous Soviet war machine might be only a scarecrow.
With Tukhachevsky in command, however, it rapidly became opera-
tional, and probably irresistible, facing a Wehrmacht that was still very
vulnerable in 1936, in the very first stages of rebuilding.
Because of Tukhachevsky, Hitler's entire milita.ry structure could be
snapped up in one bite and be destroyed.
Among Hitler's worries, the young Soviet marshal represented the
nwnber one danger, the only big real danger that could strike Germany
in the short term. This Tukhachevsky was far more capable and formida-
ble than a pawn of the general staff like Gamelin, who was all glitter and
vanity, and so admired by the old guard of the Reichswehr.
The Rus.siangeneralissimo on the other hand was not wedded to out-
dated strategies: he saw clearly, and he saw far. He had known Gennany
for a long time. During World War I he had been an indomitable prisoner,
escaping three times and crossing the Reich on foot at night, but recap-
tured each time and finally locked up in the stronghold for stubborn cases
at Ingolst.adt. And there he'd had as his roommate an Olympian French-
man so long-legged he looked like the Eiffel Tower in a kepi. The Rusman
would be in the saddle more quickly tl1an tllis Frenclunan, de Gaulle, who
would wait 20 years before anyone took notice of his military doctrines.
The Bolshevik revolution of 1917 had offered 1\1kl1achevsky the big-
gest oppo1tunity of his life. Lenin con1pletely lacked nlilitary cadres. And
1\1kl1achevsky, despite tl1e fact that his antecedents were aristocrats and
he was a young officer of tl1e czar, went swiftly over to tl1e new regime.
"Cwris1n is dead," he had said, "and will live no more." The German-So-
viet peace had brought him back to Russia. Since he accepted the Red
Star, he had been booted up to colonel witl1out delay, then to colonel gen-
eral. This Soviet Bonaparte had displayed tremendous talent. He was en-
trusted with an anny group. He had defeated Kolchak in Siberia, Denikin
at tl1e Kuban. In 1920 he had even been on the point of seizing Warsa,v,
conling out of Minsk like a flash of lightning. If it had not been for the
jealous sabotage of Conunissar Stalin, who had deprived hi.tn in the south
of one of tl1e two an11ies eannarked for llis encircle1nent operation and
tun1ed hin1 toward Landberg, 'fukl1achevsky would have conquered
Poland and ended up at Germany, where the Com1nunists were in the
process of fo1nenting revolution everywhere.
Europe might have been swallowed in those few 1nonths. After tJiat es-
capade sensible Europeans ought to have realized that they were actually
at the mercy of a raid by the Soviets.
Weygand had been rushed to Warsaw. De Gaulle as well. They had
been sent from Paris in reckless haste to save the Poles. They came back
to France convinced that their mere presence and tl1eir wise strategic
counsels had put the Soviets to flight. But 'fukl1achevsky's retreat had
been due only to a tactical difficulty. With better coordination, the Rus-
sians might have been back in Berlin a few weeks later. Whether con-
ceited or blind, tl1e Europeans preferred to believe tl1at tl1ey had slammed
tl1e door in the face of the Soviet Union forever.
After Gennany's defeat in World War I, 1\1kl1achevsky had retun1ed
clandestinely to Germany five times.
As the secret 1nilitary envoy in Berlin of the Soviet regilne he was
charged on the one hand-as was later known-with taking over the
leadership of a coup d'etat by the German Communists, should they rise.
Victor Alexandrov and the Soviet Ambassador Raskolnikov in particular
have revealed: "In 1923 he was one of a 'special' group of six me1nbers led
by Piatakov, who, in tl1e event that tl1e revolution triumphed in Gennany,
was to take command of tl1e Gennan 'Red Guard.' This group was lodged
HITLER AND TUKHACHEVSKY I 477
at No. 7 Unter den Linden, in the emb~y building of the USSR."

Tukhachevsky had later gone back to Gennany in the most natural
way in tl1e world, as an official guest of the Reichswehr, for various peri-
ods between 1926 and 1932.
The Reichswehr during this time was flirting with the USSR, which
provided it with secret exercise grounds in their distant provinces.
'l\1khachevsky had ilnpressed his Gennan hosts not only by his talent but
also by his iI1bon1 courtesy and his almost Parisian culture-one of his
grandmofuers was French. He was the son of nobles, and one of his an-
cestors had been assistant governor of Berlin in the 18th century.
Other Germans had found him too proud, too sure of himself. The
principal officer with whom he had dealt was Gen. Guderian, who even
at that tiine was convinced of the decisive effectiveness of annored forces
fonned into large units such as would later be constituted by Hitler.
'l\lkhachevsky had retained fuat instruction and turned it against the
Reich, anticipating by several years its utilization by the Fuehrer, who at
that time was still just electioneering for the party.
In 1935 Tukhachevsky had at his disposal a well-ordered strike force
of tanks, having increased it tenfold in three years: the first 20 battalions
had beco1ne 200 battalions, grouped in brigades that would soon become
divisions and then annored corps.
The air force had maintained the same pace. As early as 1934 the
USSR could count on tlrree airborne divisions.
In 1936 this 1nilitary manpower, which Tukhachevsky had fumly in
hand, would reach 2 million available men.
Stalin began to get uneasy about having one man manipulating such
a force in the USSR, and Hitler just as much felt the danger to Gennany
represented by tllis young military commander. As master not only of the
Soviet anny but-perhaps one daY, who knows-of the Soviet state,
Tukhachevsky would be able in a matter ofjust a few months to unleash
a cataclysm at the gates of Berlin, all the more so since he was openly in
favor of a war against the new Reich.
Hitler, knowing his talents and his intentions, had no desire to see him
make the first move.
The expression "having recourse to a preventative war" is one that
appears constantly in 'fukhachevsky's pronouncements prior to 1937.
"The situation is plainly favorable for us," he had explained to Marshal
Yegorov, his colleague on the general staff, in 1936. "~t us examine the
facts. At tJ1e end of this year Ute Third Reich will have available no more
than three annored divisions, and even tl1ese will be equipped almost ex-
clusively withjust light and mediwn tanks. At tlte time of the last Gennan
military review, foreign observers for the first tune were able to see an en-
tire annored division pass by. It bore the number 3. Well, everything leads
us to believe that if Hitler had four or five divisions, he would have pa-
raded one by bearing the number 4 or 6...•
•1 will pass over the figures of our production in silence. Let me con..
tinue: in 1937 the number ,of Gennan army corps will barely reach four-
t.een. France and Czechoslovakia together will have thirty-five. And once
again I am leaving our army out of my demonstration. But then we can
ask ourselves: what are we waiting for? Do we hope that with time the
ratio of forces will be more and more favorable to us?''
Marshal Yegorov had summarized the position: "The manner in which
comrade Tukhachevsky poses the question implies that he would not be
resolutely hostile to a preventative war."
Tukhachevsky had replied without hesitation: "Sooner or later we
shall be obliged to fight each other. Then why not do it while we are the
ones best prepared?"
He had been sent as a representative of the USSR to the funeral of the
king of England by Stalin, who, lacking anything specific to charge him
with, preferred to flatter the man who was later t.o be shot, rather than to
wonyhim.
In London, Tukhachevsky had acted imprudently. He had held secret
mee~ with the British chiefs of staff and revealed to them how far the
USSR had come in developing the production of artillery, planes and
tanks, hoping thereby to push the British to that preventive war that he
had made his bible and his koran. He even submitted to the British his
plan of Russian military support by means of an air bridge to Czechoslo-
vakia in case the British and French and their Central European allies
should attack Hitler's Gennany.
The British shrugged their shoulders. like the Soviets,,they didn't rel-
ish ,firing the first shot. Moreover, they did not believe the strength of tl1e
Red Anny- · :very real though it was---;to be as Tukhachevsky had de-
scribed it t.o them.
The ambassador of Great Britain in Moscow, Lord Chilston, had writ-
t.en at tbe time: 'ibe Red Anny is incapable of supporting a war in enemy
territory."
HITLER AND TUKI-IACHEVSKY I 479
"Penetrating the Russian anny would be like going into butter," ex-
plained Lord Lochan, one of the 1nost important politicians in the United
Kingdo1n.
Quite a bit later Secretary Chamberlain would declare: "I don't in the
least believe in the capability of the Russians to sustain a real offensive,
even if tl1ey wanted to."
1\lkhachevsky had thus failed to convince the British. They had all re-
mained as unmoved as the Tower of London.
At Paris, Tukhachevsky had again compromised himself even more
but with no more success. He had hunted up Gen. Gamelin. Gamelin, as
blind as a rainpart of Vauban, didn't trust anything but the concrete of his
Maginot Line.
"A preventive war," he solemnly replied to the Russian, "would be dis-
approved of by the majority of public opinion."
The anny, for him, was the electorate.
The Czechs alone had been encouraging.
"The USSR," Tukhachevsky had said in Prague, as he had said in Lon-
don, "will completely fulfill the obligations imposed on her by her treaty
with Czechoslovakia should the latter enter into conflict with the Reich,
this regardless of the origin of the conflict and even if Czechoslovakia de-
cided to ward off an eventual Gennan aggression by a preventative war."
Always the preventative war. That came at the head of all Tukhachev-
sky's strategic plans. Benes, moreover, was completely brought around to
tllis point of view. He had joined in with Tukhachevsky's plan to the point
tl1at he had fonnally declared to Gen. Semenov, the Soviet military at-
tache: "As soon as you are in a state of anned conflict with Gennany,
Czechoslovakian forces will penetrate the territory of the Third Reich
and march simultaneously on Munich and Berlin."
These initiatives of Tukhachevsky's, which were immediately squealed
to the Soviet police, had irritated Stalin, who did not wish to get involved
prematurely in any way in a preventive war, nor even a semi-preventive
one. He meant to conduct the reverse of that operation: to 1nake use of
other countries to pave tl1e way for hhn, to turn Gennany against the West
and the West against GennanY, and then to utilize one or both as an "ice-
breaker to shatter the capitalist world."
"The liberties taken by 1\d<hachevsky overstep [his] bounds," writes
Benoist-Mechin, analyzing Stalin's state of mind. "Not content with meet-
ing in secret conferences with Soviet 1nilitary attaches abroad and di-
vulging military secrets of tJ1e greatest iinportance to the British and the
French, now he takes it upon himself openly to state views that are in
conflict wid1 tltose of the govenunent Is he the one directing the policies
of tlle Union of Soviet Socialist Republics? Does he already tllink himself
master of tJ1e Krenllin?"
Crouching in his tllicket of suspicions, by nature suspicious of every•
tlung, and having already put to deatb many competitors who wonied
hbu, fron, then on Stalin had Tukhachevsky's name inscribed on the very
first page of his red notebook of suspects.
Analy'Ling tbe secret intelligence he received from Paris, Prague and
London, Hitler, like a silent fox, had followed Stalin's psychic develop-
ment with watchful eyes.
If he succeeded in aggravating Stalin's suspicions, in reinforcing them
by means of evident proofs, perhaps he could manage to have Stalin him-
self dispose of 'TukhachevskY, the one true war leader the Soviets pos-
ses5ed and the one he most feared, before the Wehnnacht was .ready.
Hitler began to prepare the investment of Josef Stalin's brain with dis-
creet, progfe$ive, ahnost imperceptible touches, advancing toward his
goal not by the highway but through the roadside thickets.
Benes, everyone knew, was the confidant most trusted by the mas-
ter of Moscow. Stalin had Czechoslovakia at his disposal. Czech air-
fields were dotted with Soviet planes manned by Soviet pilots. If Hitler
succeeded in circumventing Benes, indirectly he would be clrcumventr
ing Stalin.
Hitler advanced like an invisible mole bUITOwing his undergrom1d pas--
sage with little strokes of muzzle and paw•.
The first man Hitler used against the Czechs was a double agent of
the Soviets named Nicolas Skobline, who was officially the president of
the OryanisationMondiale des Militaires Russes en Emigration [World
Organization of Russian Setvicemen Ernigres).
Skobline had a great need of money. He had married a prima ballerina
of remarkable beauty, hence of costly upkeep, who was the .former mis-
tress of an agent of the GPU; and she had delivered her often moneyless
new lover into the t.oils of her old USSR employers.
Skobline, with ever increasing financial needs, had also become an
agent of Reinhard Heydrlch, the most fonnidable man of the German se-
curity setvices.
In using this RU$ian, Heydrich was playing a dangerous game.. He
lmew the mants duplicity. His colleagues warned him of the danger; but
Heydrich was audacious and of very superior intelligence, and he ac-
cepted the risk
On his instructions, an ex-officer of the Russian navy who was in his
service, Nicolas Alexeiev, deliberately let himself be arrested by the
French espionage service. Duly grilled by a Paris military examining mag-
istrate and playing the classic spy who wants to regain his freedom, he
went on to "confessions" that were bound to make an extraordinary im-
pression: "Marshal Tukhachevsky," he revealed, "is in the process of fo-
menting a plot against Stalin in league with high-ranking Gennan military
officers. At the time of his recent visit to France," he added, "he had the
Soviet military attaches at Prague and Warsaw come secretly to Paris in
order to win them over to his plan."
The physical fact of this meeting was true. So any manner of suppo-
sitions could be embroidered onto it
The secret report of the French examining magistrate implicating
Tukhachevsky had been sent in great secrecy to the military attache of the
French embassy at Prague so that he could transmit it to Benes. Upon
reading it, the Czech president had been impressed without being entirely
convinced.
He nevertheless remembered some strange confidences made to his
chief of the general staff by the general and future Soviet marshal,
Chapochnikov, whot like Tukhachevsky, had belonged to the c1.8rist arrny;
so that botht as deserters to the enemy, were capable of turning their
coats a second tune.
"During the civil war," Chapochnikov had said in a subdued voice, "I
might very well have become one of the leaders of Denikin's White Anny
if, instead of finding myself in Moscow in 1918, I had been in Rostov-on-
Dont where the White Army was born. I believe that for all of us officers
of the general staff, being won over to White or Red simply depended
upon our geographical circumstances."
A second "arrest" a few days later, just as spontaneous as the one at
Paris, was going to reinforce the disquieting revelation communicated to
Benes by the French government.
An informant of Skoblinets named Grylevitcht in Switzerland this time,
worked for him as an agent witllin Trotskyite circles in Geneva, while
having it believed by the latter that he was politically of their persuasion.
Llke many of his colleagues, he was subsidized by another espionage
service, that of the Czechs. Skobline was going to do a replay in Switzer-

land of the Paris coup.
A few days later, Grylevitch is arrested. As Skobline had pre-

dicted, he 'confesses' everything, and more besides. To take his
word for it, Tukhachevsky was preparing a violent coup in
Moscow with the 'Irotskyites and certain members of the Gennan
general staff. An initial police report taking note of these state-
ments is sent to Benes. Upon looking through it, the president of
the Czechoslovakian republic thinks the sky has fallen in.
Benoist-Medlin adds:
The thing seems inconceivable to him. However, tl1e poison is

starting to work without his knowing it As he is about to throw
the report in the wastebasket, he thinks better of it and tucks it
away-to whom it may concern -in his personal file.
The two confessions confinn each other. It would require only a few
last licks to give them a quite worrisome aspect
Heydrich himself crune all the way from Berlin to set up in person tl1e
third operation of "psychological disinfonnation," as it would be called
today.
The Czechs at the time were negotiating a commercial agreement with
the Reich. An expert from the Gennan Ministry of Foreign Affairs, Herr
Trautmannsdorf, was given the commission of casually introducing into
the conversation with tl1e Czech negotiator, Mr. Mastny, Benes's ambas-
sador in Berlin, just as if notlling were the matter, a few words that would
raise the beginnin~ of suspicion. Trautmannsdorf was to give the diplo-
mat to understand that it would perhaps be useful if their negotiations
not last too long because there was something fishy going on.
"I know," he said almost confidentially in the Czech's ear, "that you're
afraid you'll antagonize the Russians by signing this agreement, but the
Russian military people have contacted our people to put an end to the
tension between our two countries. The policy of the USSR could very
well undergo a change of direction, and then it would be too late.... "
The Czech diplomat swallowed the bait That very day he dispatched
a report to Benes containing that astonishing conversation.
After tJ1e revelations of the exruniningjudge at Paris and the comple-

111enta.ty "confessions" of the agent Grylevitch in Switzerland, this intel-
ligence fro1n his own ambassador in Berlin finally convinced Benes.
Posthaste he sum1noned the 1ninister of the USSR in Prague, Mr.
Alexanclrovsky, to the govenunent palace. He comn1unicated the report
of his diplomat in Berlin and the earlier "confessions" from France and
Switzerland.
Having no further suspicions, he had just fallen into Heyclrich's trap.
Three years after the war he would still harbor an ironclad belief in those
documents uncovering the plot tJ1at had been furnished him, beyond any
question of doubt, by Hitler's espionage service. In his Memoires de ma
vie that he published in the GazeUe de Lausanne of March 2, 1948, he
would still write ingenuously: "In January 1937 an unofficial communi-
cation from Berlin applised me that the negotiations there were consid-
ered to have failed. A strictly confidential note added that Hitler was for
the tiine being pursuing other secret talks, which, in case they were suc-
cessful, would also have repercussions on our policy. A word let slip by
Trautmannsdorlf made it clear to us that it concerned negotiations with
certain Soviet circles, notably Tukhachevsky, Rykov ru1d others. Hitler
was so convinced of the success of these negotiations that he didn't insist
on concluding an agreement with us, so persuaded was he of success
with Moscow. To be sure, if he had succeeded in his purpose and had
been able to alter the course of Soviet policy, the face of Europe would
have been changed; but Stalin intervened in good tinle. I immediately in-
fonued Mr. Alexanclrovsky, the minister of the USSR at Prague, of the
news we had received fro1n Berlin, supplemented by the Mastny-Traut-
mannsdorf conversation."
Churchill himself had swallowed the bait set by the Gestapo to trap
Benes, and he swallowed it whole. In his memoirs he recalls "the service
that Benes rendered Stalin."
''The 1nilitary conspiracy and the plot of the Communist Old Guard
aimed at overthrowing Stalin and giving Russia a new regime whose pol-
icy would have been pro-Gem1ru1. Without wasting a moment, President
Benes let Stalin know all the infonnation he had been able to collect.
Shortly afterward a ruthless purge was carried out in Soviet Russia."
Benes hastened to infonn not only Stalin of this "plot," but also his dear
French colleague of the Front Populaire, M. Leon Blum.
Blu1n stated on June 18, 1945: "At the end of 1936, I received privately
and in strict confidence fro1n 1ny friend, M. Edouard Benes, a warning

transmitted by nzy son, who was pas.5ing tlu-ough Prague, urgently advis-
ing n1e to ob.seive the greatest precaution in our relations with the Soviet
general staff. According to his own intelligence service-and the Czech
intelligence service eajoyed a well-deseived reputation in Europe-the
leaders of tl1e Soviet high conunand general staff were having question-
able dealings witll Gern1any. A few months later the trial known as the
Tukhachevsky 'liial burst on the scene."
Hitler, through Heydrich, was nearing his goal. In a short while he
would reach it Upon receiving Benes's news, Stalin had roared as if
someone had torn off his nose and his ears.
However, Benes had sent him only confessions and third-hand infor-
mation. It was proof, direct and definitive proof, that he needed. He im-
mediately summoned Iegov, his new chief of the NKVD, and thrust the file
of papers from Prague under his nose.
"rm sick of all tllese conspiracies." he shouted. "I want to get to tlle
bottom of it., and the only way you'll earn my confidence is not to come
and tell me there is no plot, but to bring me the proof."
Hitler was going to furnish him tlle proof at a huge price. And tlle cost
to Hitler would be no more than a strong dose of imagination and guile.
The ~ians were going to come and beg for tlle proof themselves
and pay for it to the last cent Soviet police had been dispatched to look
for the proof in Germany.
The embassy of the USSR in Berlin was on edge. A member of the
staff was maintaining momentary contacts witll a man in Hitler's en-
tourage. This man, after a great deal of urging, intimated to his questioner
that in fact to his knowledge certain proofs did exist, but that it would cer-
tainly be ver:y difficult to obtain them.
Having come on this first scent, the functionary of the Soviet embassy
boarded an airplane leaving for Moscow. He brought back a special emis-
sar:y of the GPU namedJeschov, who carried official accreditation. Stalin
had personally ordered him t.o get the mentioned proof at any price.
Hitler's intermediary, playing his role to perfection, demurred. He
would not be easy to corrupt
Heydrich needed time. The proofs so ardently coveted by Moscow,
the proofs that would absolutely establish Tukhachevsky's guilt-he still
had to get possession of them, that is to say, to manufacture them.
Handwritten letters sent by Tukhachevsky to high-ranking Gennan
officers did exist, it was true, letters dating from the years of regular tech-
nical collaboration. But they were in the quadruple-locked strong boxes
of the general staff of the Wehnnacht To ask the Wehnnacht for them, or
to request them from the head of Army Intelligence, Adnliral Canaris, a
sly ene1ny of the regime, was to run the risk of having Canaris inform
Tukhachevsky himself of the maneuver and upset the whole operation.
Heydrich preferred to procure them directly.
The head of Nazi counterespionage, SS Gen. Walter Schellenberg, re-
lated after the war:
Hitler issued an explicit order to leave the staff of the German
anny in absolute ignorance of what was brewing against Tukhachev-
sky lest German officers should alert the Soviet marshal.
Heydrich consequently one night sent two police brigades to
break open the secret archives of the general staff of the Abweh1·
(Army Intelligence Service, directed by Admiral Canaris).
Break-in experts from the Criminal Division of the Police Admin-
istration accompanied the brigades. In three places they found and
seized files concerning the collaboration of the Gem1an General Head-
quarters and the Red Am1y. Important infonnation was also found in
Admiral Canaris's file cards. To cover up the break-in, a fire was
started which eliminated all traces of it. In the resulting confusion,
the special brigades were able to sneak away without being noticed.
Walter Hagen, a high official of the Gestapo, in his book Die Geheime
Front, has recounted the sequel to that operation of state burglary: "In
that way the necessary models were obtained for the intended forgeries.
The work of falsification began in April of 1937 in tl1e vaults beneath the
Gestapo building, on Prinz Albrecht Street in Berlin. [SS Gen. Herman]
Behrens had a laboratory equipped with all the most advanced technical
inventions. He hilnself kept watch, and the workrooms were con1pletely
isolated. Only those persons strictly indispensable had access to tl1e1n."
What was this "dossier" going to contain? "It is certain," Walter Hagen
adds, "that in the vaults of Albrecht Street, forgeries were 1nade of a cor-
respondence several years old between Tukhachevsky and his collabora-
tors and various ilnportant Gennan generals. It was clearly deduced frorn
this correspondence that the 'Red Napoleon' had won over the Wehr-
macht to his conspiracy plans against Stalin."
"At tlle end of a few days" (four days), Gen. Walter Schellenberg
writes, "all tl1e material was ready."
"As early as tl,e first days of May," Walter Hagen states, "Hi.nunler was
able to present Hitler witl1 a red rug containing a fairly large packet of
docmnents. Besides tl,e letters, tl1e file contained documents of all sorts,
including receipts signed by Soviet generals acknowledging the payment
of large sums by Gennan counterespionage in exchange for infonnation
they had funlished. All tl1ese forged letters of Tukhachevsky and otl,er So-
viet generals bore tl1e neces&ny sta.Inps and seals. The signatures of von
Seeckt, Hanunerstein, Canaris and other generals establishing that they
had seen the letters were magnificently forged. The letters of important
Gennans addressed t,o the Russian conspiraoors were there in the form
of carbon copies." Also in the rug were carbon copies of forged letters in
which the head of Gennan counterespionage thanked Tukhachevsky and
otl1er Soviet generals for the infonnation tl1ey had furnished about the
RedAnny.
Very particular care had been taken with the preparation of forged re-
ceipts. Some of them endorsed by Tukhachevsky himself had been forged
from true bills for expenses signed by the Soviet marshal when he had
been in Gennany as an official guest of the Reichswehr. The scale of re-
muneration that Tukhachevsky was supposed t,o have received for his
espionage services has been revealed by Alexandrov, the Russian author,
and by Raskolnikov, the Soviet diplomat, amb~dor of the USSR at
Sofia at the time this drama rook place:
• 5,000 RM for infonnation of secondary importance;
• 10,000 RM for "regular" reports;
• 30,000 RM for important reports;
• 250,000 RM for the "general plan of mobilization and regional dispo-
sition" of the USSR.
On this basis, Tukhachevsky presumably received 1,000,000 Reichs-
marks in t.otal.
It was still neces.5ary that the emissary of the GPU take this accusatory
forged dossier seriously.
"If you tum it over t,o them for nothing," Hitler pointed out to Hey-
drich, "they will have doubts about it We must on the contrary demand
an enonnous sum of money from them so that they will be convinced
that their 'Gennan accomplice' is letting them have a dossier worth its
weight in gold"
Heydrich: "How much should we ask?"
Hitler: '1'hree million rubies."
In those days that was a fantastic sum, an amount never paid for an
espionage dossier. Stalin's emissary ran through the documents. He
opened his attache case and released the three million in packets.
'l\1khachevsky's fate was sealed.
Hitler felt not the slightest personal dislike for Tukhachevsky. In truth,
he admired him. He would have been very willing to name him com-
mander-in-chief of the Wehnnacht
UnfortunatelyTukhachevsky commanded-and very well-the anny
of the other side, an army that could crush Gennany if Hitler, at least for
a time, could not neutralize its impact War is war. Tukhachevsky was de-
tennined to unleash a preventative war against Gennany, hence he was
public enemy No. 1. If Hitler wished to stop the enonnous and more and
more dangerous development of the Red Army and its drive against his
countrY, it was absolutely imperative that Tukhachevsky, a determined
partisan of a military intervention in Gennany, be put out of the running
before he took action.
The founder of the Red Anny, the Jewish Bronstein, known under the
name of Trotsky, had been struck down before him. He had been
cashiered by Stalin in 1924. But he had saved his skin intact and had been
able to find exile in Turkey, in France, in Norway and in America. Stalin
had regretted what he called his mansuetude, but it was not until 16 years
later, on Aug. 20, 1940, that he succeeded in having someone bash in Trot-
sky's skull in Mexico with a mountain climber's ice axe. Upon receipt of
the dossier from Berlin, Tukhachevsky was clearly going to be arrested
and court-martialed.
Stalin's rage this time would be exercised more swiftly than with Trot-
sky. It would be the fury of a savage. On June 11, 1937, an official commu-
nique of two short pages announced straightaway that Tukhachevsky and
a number of "accomplices" were remanded before a military tribunal
under an indictment of having taken part "in an undertaking against the
state in liaison with leading military circles of a foreign power then follow-
ing an unfriendly policy toward the USSR.,,
Incredibly, after interrogations of which we know nothing at all,
Tukhachevsky and all of his codefendants formally acknowledged the
authenticity of the forged documents and the forged receipts that the tri-
bunal brandished before them. It was scarcely to be believed. In an open
hearing, the victims of the forgeries stated that the forgeries were true
documents.
<U\8 I IIITLEH DEMOCHAT
In reality, this was not at all exceptional. Invariably in the USSR, the
accused have acla1owledged thenlSelves guilty of the worst 1nonstrosities
of which they have been falsely accused. Koestler has explained it stlik-
ingly in his Le Zero et l'hifini [a French version of Darkness at Noon].
Obviously no graphologi.cal exanti.nation of any kind was n1ade. TI1ere
,vas no prelilni.nary exrunination. No public trial either. Nor any defense.
1\1khnchevsky and tl1e otl1er accused had adnlitted that the forged Berlin
docu1nents were really tl1eir own. That was sufficient. Capital punish-
n1ent. TI1e following day a bulletin of a dozen lines on tl1e very last page
of tl1e newspapers announced tl1at the 1\1khachevsky group had one and
all been executed tlmt srune 1light.
"All the accused have acknowledged tl1eniselves to be entirely guilty
of tl1e accusations brought against tl1e1n." So read tile judgn1ent handed
down on June 11, 1937. Stalin's fury extended to Tukhachevsky's entire
fanilly. They were all killed: his wife, his daughter, llis brotl1er, llis four sis-
ters.
Shortly afterward it would even co1ne to tllis, that seven out of nine of
1\tkhachevsky's judges would be shot the same year, just to make sure
that they would keep the professional secret. (Note about foregoing sen-
tence: h1 the French text, p. 354, first line on the page, tl1e word seven is
crossed out and has a couple of question n1arks above it. Whether De-
grelle forgot to make a change or correction he conte1nplated or decided
not to make a change after all, the translator can1t tell. But that's the way
he left it-Ed.] Stalin would not stop there.
Thirty-two thousand or 35,000-no one knows exactly-of the 60,000
officers of tl1e Soviet anny would be killed.
It was no longer a purge; it was a massacre. Tens of tl1ousands of of-
ficers were deen1ed to have been confederates of 1\1khachevsky. Three
out of five n1arshals would be killed. Two hundred and twenty b1igade
commanders out of 406. One hundred and ten division conunanders out
of 195. Fifty-seven anny corps commanders out of 85. Thirteen anny co1n-
manders out of 15. Below them: 90 percent of tl1e generals and 80 percent
of tl1e colonels would be killed. hl a few months tl1e inunense anny of
the Soviets was without commanders and in outright anarchy. More tJ1ru1
half of tl1e corps of officers had been assassinated.
Hitler could never have dreamed of such an annihilation of the anny
that so short a time ago had been an iinminent threat. An annihilation
carried out by Stalin hi.tnself, tl1at was the beauty of it.
Thanks to that extraorclinacy collaboration, four years would be won

by Hitler before tl1e 1nassive Soviet military forces had an adequate com-
n1and stn1cture again. They would come close to being totally annihilated
in tl1e sununer and fall of 1941 because of tllat incredible decapitation
which had left tl1e bleeding cadres virtually devoid of all but the most
spineless officers, who trembled when tlle tyrant so much as frowned.
Who in tl1e USSR would still be overzealous?
"Zeal is useful only in catching fleas," said Marshal Semyon Budenny,
one of tlle two surviving marshals. The otller surviving marshal, Chapoc-
hnikov, who could just as easily as any of tlle otllers have been stood up
against tl1e wall, had heaved an enonnous sigh of relief to be named "di-
rector of tl1e chess club."
In his "Secret Report," Khrushchev himself would admit that "the mas-
sive elimination of military leaders carried out by Stalin had disastrous ef-
fects on tlle Red Anny, to which may be ascribed the latter's defeats
during tlle first phase of World War II." But Khrushchev would not say it
until after Stalin's deatl1. In those tenible days of June 1937, when Stalin,
the great carnivore, was sounding his death howl in the steppe,
Khrushchev was howling even louder with the pack In the very montl1
Tukhachevsky was assassinated, Khrushchev exclaimed: "Stalin is the
greatest genius, the master and leader of hun1anity." He called for still
more slaughter: "We shall annihilate our enenlies to the last man and fling
their ashes to tl1e winds."
Two days later, before the Conununists of Kiev, his political bailiwick,
Khrushchev again en1phasized: "We have already annihilated a consider-
able nu111ber of our ene1nies but not all." That was denouncing tlle thou-
sands of future victims: 1,108 me1nbers of the congress out of 1,966, in
otl1er words 1nore tl1an half, were massacred. And 98 members of the 138
directors of tl1e Soviet Central Committee.
It was a 1natter of who would offer tl1e most pledges of seIVility to
save his own skin. Everyone had become a suspect, that is to say auto-
matically guilty. The whole party, just like tlle army, was torn to pieces.
The Soviet archives remain silent about all these crimes, silent as the
grave. Assuming tl1ere were graves. How many didn't just have "their
ashes flung to tl1e winds," as tl1e valiant Khrushchev put it? Stalin had
carried irony to the point of seeing tllat he got 'l\1khachevsky's execution
free of charge. He had noted down tlle nwnbers of the 3 million rubies
sent to Berlin in payment of tlle prefabricated dossier. The first Gennans
490 I HITL•:R DEMOCRAT
who used the bills in Russia were immediately arrested.

BotJ, of tl1e players had swindled the otl,er. But Hitler was tl1e real
winner. 1l1e 3 nilllion rubies did not interest hhn; tl1ey had been no more
than part of tt,e bluff. What counted for hiin was the decapitation of the
Soviet military, which would now be without offensive power for a long
time. The "preventative war" had been defeated before it even got started.
Stalin had perfonned titanic labors prior to 1936 in order to industri-
alize his cow1try and give it the largest anny in the world, with 10 times
as many annored vehicles as Hitler. He could have used it then and there
to sweep away every obstacle in the world. And now, manipulated by his
own enemy, he had just gutted it frightfully, delaying any chance of a
worldwide expansion of Comnumism for some years to come.
For Hitler, it had been absolutely imperative at the time to make Stalin
lose those years if, facing the immediate threat of a Tukhachevsky, he in-
tended to make up the lag not only of his own country but of Europe as
a whole. He had attained his goal by getting Stalin himself t.o eliminate the
man upon whom primarily rested the shock force of his army.
Following Tukhachevsky's execution and the "purge," the massacre of
t.ens of thousands of officers paralyzed for some time the military power
of the Soviets. Hitler was not blind. The Soviet danger would reappear.
But Gennany had won her respite. Hitler could now spur on his quite
young anny barely emerged from nothing.
He had created a revolutionary doctrine of warfare from the ground
up. Night and day he was going to hammer out on the anvil of the New
Reich the red-hot iron of his elite Wehnnacht, the Wehrmacht of modem
anns, the Wehnnacht of youth, the Wehnnacht of the people.
CHAPTER
REVOLUTIONIZING WARFARE
ompulsory military service had not been reestablished in the

Reich until March 16, 1935, after France had inaugurated her
own two-year enlistn\ent The decision to create 12 army
corps in Gennany comprising 36 divisions had only been taken
on that same day. Equipment was practically nonexistent
"It is certain," wrote Gen. Gainelin, head of the French anny, "that at
that tune we were cleai·ly ahead of all the otl1er annies insofar as the qual-
ity of the prototypes we had adopted was concerned."
When, a year later, on March 7, 1936, Adolf Hitler decided to reoccupy
nlilitarily tl1e Gennan left baitlc of tl1e Rhine, he still only had available, as
we know today, a hybrid force tl1at a swift French attack would have sent
light back to the otl1er side of the bridges of Koblenz and Cologne.
In 1936 Hitler could at best have 1nustered only a fourth as many sol-
1
diers as the Russians had and a tentl1 as 1nany tanks. In tenns of quantity,
Hitler was thus tl1e loser. He could make up for it and reestablish a degree
of balance only by means of quality: quality of strategy, quality of equip-
ment and quality of the human beings involved.
The art of warfare as it had been practiced during World War I no
longer had validity for Hitler. Any way he looked at it, confronting the
enemy numelically, forces against forces, he would be beaten. If he had
to go up against France, France and her British, Polish and Czech allies
would come to the meeting with forces several times 1nore numerous
than his own. If t11e encounter were to come witl1 the USSR, he would
492 I Hn'l.EH DEMOCRAT
have to fight one against four. It was thus absolutely imperative that he
devise a new strategy based on unexpected breakthrough forces, on qual-
ity and on speed.
That ,vould be tl1e blitzlaieg, tlle lightning war: it was going to make
it J>O.$ible to ntSh at an ene1ny and defeat him in a flash and be able im-
n1ediately to n1ake a second attack on a second adversary. It would also
n1eru1 the coordinated use of massive arn1ored forces combined with air
forces slashing to pieces any obstacle in front of the tank divisions, pierc-
ing ru1d dispersing it like divisions of cavalry in bygone times.
At tlle end of World War I, tlle use of tanks grouped in large units had
been inaugurated by tlle British. The defeat of Germany was due in good
part to tlle skepticism of tlle Gennan command, its unwillingness to make
n~ive use of this new tactic, which, though making its first appearance,
was strikingly effective.
The old Allied military staffs had quickly gone back to the old notions
of tlle superiority of tlle infantry. However, several foreign strategists had
continued after 1918 to advocate tlle use of this innovation on a large
scale. On tl1e Soviet side, Marshal Tukhachevsky had been eager to make
it tlle basis of tlle reconstruction of tlle Red Army.
In France, de Gaulle, tllen a colonei haughty and scornful but discern-
ing, had tried to shake tlle old military staffs-once more dozing in the
quagmire of conformity-out of tlleir torpor by demanding, vainlY, tlle
fonnation of large annored units.
Before 1939, tanks were generally spread around at tlle rate of four per
infantcy battalion. They were just mechanized, armored artillery that
could be moved at a bit faster pace on favorable terrain. But dispersed,
tlleir breakthrough force was nil. Tanks were worthwhile only when they
were brought togetller in a main striking force, driving forward as a whole
to open a great breach through which tlle infantcy-also mechanized-
would tllen hurl tllemselves in attack
The Allied staff officers in 1935 still persisted in increasing tlle number
of cavalry divisions-Le., mounted horse soldiers-which 50 machine
guns could mow down. It was tlle high-speed motor, the armored
weapon, tllen invulnerable, tllat was to replace the horse tllat went down
at the first burst of gun.fire.
De Gaulle talked himself blue in vain. He did not wake up any of tlle
aged b~ hats. He simply gained their dislike. The plans he presented to
the parliament were rejected. He would have no following, or at most
REVOLUTIONIZING WARFARE I 493
The Blitzkrieg: Germany occupied Luxembourg on May 10, 1940, with little resistance-
six Luxembourgian policemen and soldiers were injured. The German campaign
against Belgium, Netherlands and Luxembourg was motivated by British and French ef-
forts to use the Low Countries as bases of operation against the German Reich.
only a very sn1all one, until it was too late: the one and only French ar-
mored division, poorly equipped and scarcely broken in, that would see
action in May 1940 at the last minute, after the disaster of Sedan, would
be scattered like a box of matches on that same day.
In Germany the traditional generals had been no more clear-sighted
than their French colleagues caught up in the ways of the past. Having
been half a century in the military profession, they thought themselves
forever possessed of the absolute in military science. They considered
every proposed innovation an insult to their intelligence equivalent to
the crime of lese-majeste, above all when, as in Gennany, it was a for-
mer corporal who had the presumption to wish to give lessons to the
high command.
Hitler had in fact tried to convert these old army officers to his revo-
lutionary ideas of strategy. For a long period he would experience almost
scornful opposition from me1nbers of the high conunand general staff
who were as inflexible as tl1eir fonner pointed helmets of 1914. He would
49.i I IIITLEH DEMOCRAT
often be sabotaged by tJ,en, and was even the target of several plots, in-
cluding aue1npts at his assassination.
He would be extre1nely patient, for however hidebound they 1night be
in tJ1eir prajudices, these anny conservatives in the beginning at least
were indispensable to hin1 if he wished to asse1nble the physical frrune-
\vork of his \Vehm1acht. They were professionals. Without their often
ftt$Y ntethods, witl,out tlleir training, witl\out tl1eir rigorous adherence
to regulations, tl1ejob of creating this enonnous nulitary 1nachine would
co1ne to nothing at tl1e very outset, at tl1e 1nere barracks stage.
S01ue of tl1ese old nillitaiy fossils living in the past never did learn at
all. Otl1ers adapted. S01ne of tl1e1n, like Guderian and Rommel, under-
stood Hitler perfectly. They fell in step witl1 hiin quickly and enthusiasti-
cally. But ,vhether gn1n1bling or understanding, all staff officers did
continue to co1nply witl1 orders. With Hitler, it would have been difficult
to do otherwise: the monocles of tl1e reactionaries would have gone flying
into tlle air like wood clups. When Hitler gave a conunand, you obeyed or
else. TI1e Fuehrer's 1nost inunediate task then was to get staited on the
creation of tl1e large units of wluch he dreained.
The sununer of 1936 had no sooner co1ne-after a year of work-
tl1ai1 tl1ree panzer divisions had come into being. One at Weilnar. The
second at Berlin. The third at Wuerzburg, co1n1nai1ded by the officer
who had been first to understand Hitler's idea, Gen. Guderian, tl1e future
spearhead of tl1e Reich's armored forces. A fourtl1 annored division was
already being readied in Westphalia Each of these divisions would be
con1posed of 300 tanks. In tenns of equip1nent they would be provided
with all the most effective 1ueans required to engage in combat in co1n-
plete autonomy.
In May of 1940 it would no longer be four panzer divisions that Hitler
could hurl before him like enonnous packs of wolves across France, but
10 annorecl divisions riding on 1nore than 3,000 tanks, steel batte1ing rains
wiU1 3,000 irresistible heads. Irresistible because Hitler had seen fartl1er,
or to be precise, higher tl1an tank divisions. It was he who invented the
strategy of pairing planes with tanks. In that connection, whatever tales
may have been told about it since, he was the only one before 1940 to
thlnkofit
De Gaulle did not even have any idea of it In later editions of his
books after 1945, tl1e impression is given that he had been the inventor,
or one of tlle inventors, of tlus revolutionary method of warfare. But the
passages that iJnply that he tl1ought up tlle strategy are brazen additions.
In the editions of that tune, de Gaulle never speaks of anything but tanks
alone, not having discerned tl1at making a slashing attack on tlle terrain
in front of the tanks with diving planes would facilitate tlleir advance.
That would be tl1e role of tl1e Stukas plunging down from tlle sky at a ter-
rifying speed witl1 a great howling of engines, pinning down tlle soldiers
or putting the1n to flight, devastating all tlle defense works, and opening
gaping holes for tl1e passage of tlle hundreds of tanks tllat have nothing
more to do but to rush en masse through the gaps. That combination-
tl1at team assault-would be the greatest of military discoveries, a dis-
covery of genius by Hitler.
1\1khachevsky had thought of a shnilar innovation when he created di-
visions of parachutists who would fall upon tlle t.arget just as the tanks
were beginning tl1eir onslaught. Such a descent, however, was slow and
fraught witll risk. On the ground, fallen where tlle wind has brought him,
entangled in his harness, a n1an is inevitably less effective than a scream-
ing aerial torpedo fraginenting, pulverizing every bit of trench, every ma-
chine-gun nest, every cannon.
Hitler's solution was the good one. A simple solution, as all his solu-
tions were silnple. They were the essential basis of the strategic and tac-
tical revolution of World War II. It was thanks to that solution that Hitler
would annihilate the French ariny in three days in 1940. And that he
reached Smolensk in tlu-ee weeks in 1941.
He would not be effectively opposed until the Americans and their
Russian proteges tun1ed the invention against him a few years later and
witl1 tl1e aid of much greater 1neans, with 50,000 tanks instead of the 3,000
of 1940 and 100,000 planes instead of Hitler's 4,000-5,000. But he was the
inventor of the new strategy- even if this invention, which gave hin1 his
tritunphs from 1939 to 1942, finally brought about his ruin.
While France from 1926 on was putting untold billions into the belly
of the gigantic concrete crocodile called the Maginot Line-a futile mon-
un1ent to laziness-Hitler, at infinitely less expense but with the decision-
making power of tl1e true leader and an imagination that bent reality to
his will, gave a revolutionary structure to a Wehnnacht just emerging
fro1n tl1e ooze, like man on tl1e sixth day of terrestrial creation.
In his new army Hitler would of course be tl1e sole master.
He was no Wilhelm II, a 1nere ornamental leader exercisingjust tJ1e fa-
cade of power in tune of war. Witl1 Hitler, fictitious authority was a thing
of Ute past. 'l11e supren1e conunand vested in tl1e head of state would be-
co1ne n1ore tl1an a silnple peacetilne on1ament. Hitler would exercise it
in tune of war personally and totally.
By virtue of tl1e law he had promulgated on Aug. 1, 1934, tl1e six prin-
cipal rights reserved to tl1e nlilitary conunand were his exclusive respon-
sibility: the right of organization (he could create or dissolve the military
as he pleased); the right of promotion and appointment; tl1e right of in-
spection (notlung would escape lus discerning eye); the right of distribu-
tion (tlle various nulitary units would be distributed, stationed, altered
according to his orders only); tlle right of mobilization; and, finally, the
right of grace.
The nunister of war would tilencefortll serve as his immediate instru-
ment for carrying out his orders. Under him, tile military forces would
be separated into tllree great divisions: tile ground forces (Gen. von
Fiitsch); tlle air forces (Marshal Goering); and tile navy (Adrn. Raeder).
The ground forces were temporarily composed-pending improve-
ment-of 10 army corps, each tllree divisions in strength.
As for the air force-six Luf(k:reise-it had a strengtll on April 1, 1936,
of 18 wings of 81 planes each. The same year two additional Luftkreise
would add six more wings of 81 planes. Total: 1,944 aircraft. That was not
yet tile Himalayas. But tilose 1,944 planes represented equipment of tile
very highest quality, superlatively manned by physically and morally elite
aircrews working witil exemplary discipline in exact accord with the new
strat.egy ordered by Hitler.
The coordination of the air wings, tlle panzer divisions and the mobile
infantry had even tllen been very precisely determined: 1) The panzer di-
visions must have regular divisions following in tileir tracks. 2) The pace
of the latter must tllerefore be accelerated. This acceleration can be ob-
tained only by the motorization, if not of all tlleir units, of at least a suffi-
cient number of them to enable them to rush into the breach opened by
tlle tanks. 3) The penetrating force of the panzer divisions must be in-
creased by having them preceded by waves of bomber planes.
In one year 650,000 young Gennans were tllus given training in accor-
dance with an absolutely new strategy that no adversary had foreseen.
Only Hitler's energy of steel had made this vigorous start possible
in so short a lapse of time. The difficulties had been without number.
The commanders of large units, faced with the affluence of these
6501000 or so recruits1no longer lmew which way to turn. They were
suffering fro1n an enonnous shortage of cadres. But Hitler gave the

order: there was no dragging their feet "I give you back an anny," he
told the generals, who were dead tired and at times overtaxed, "and you
dare to complain about it"
He knew perfectly well that he was going through a very dangerous
period. It would be at least another year or two before his 36 divisions
would be usable. In the East as in the West tl1e net had been cast in which
they meant to catch him and strangle him. He had to act fast His orders
were harsh. Everyone had to obey whether he liked it or not, and to work
until he dropped.
"The Gennan nation," Hitler repeated, "has withstood the great mi-
grations, the Roman wars, the invasion of the Huns, the Tartars and the
Mongols. It has withstood the Thirty Years War, the wars of the time of
Frederick and the age of Napoleon, and it will endure 1ne as well." Every-
one did endure. Indeed they were all super zealous, for tl1ey knew that
otherwise Hitler would come down hard on their lazy heads.
"It is really tn1e," Benoist-Mechin writes, "tJ1at in the fallowing 1nonths
fantastic progress is made. Unceasingly new units are added to those al-
ready in existence. Rifles, machine guns, cannon, tanks come out of the
factories at an accelerated pace. The number of Wehrkreise [corps areas]
is increased from 10 to 12. The nmnber of regular divisions goes fro1n 36
to 50; of annored divisions, from three to six."
But the thing that increased the most, even more than the number of
divisions, was the tremendous morale of the young men of tl1e new army,
stronger than Guderian's tanks and all of Goering's Stukas.
Hitler did not carry away tens of millions of Gennan voters without
having perfected to the highest degree his tactics of psychological invest-
ment It was not soldiers he was gathering together; they were ideological
combatants. If a war broke out, it would not bejustshells but ideas that
would be fired off.
The new Gennany of 1936 was vibrant with intense patriotis1n. For
tile Reich had given it direction again. It had ceased to be a conglomerate
of classes poorly cemented together and had become a co1nmunity in
which everyone was a bit of life. It was a millennial heritage of grandeur,
of culture, of spiritual radiance, of reverses, of afflictions, of victories.
Everyone recognized anew every line of the face of his fatherland, felt
the beat of its heart The young people had forgotten tl1e arbitrary lines
of demarcation of tl1e parties that fonnerly separated them. They now
just fonued a whole of several nlillions of healthy young fellows and girls,
beautiful and vigorous, trained in all tl1e sports, traveling about their
cow1tcy singing.
Established in especially splendid sites, regional schools and three na-
tional schools fom1ed a nursery of young leaders, both male and female.
Every section of the Hitler Youtl1 Movement (HitletjugeruI) down to the
n1ost ren1ote village of any size had its life cent.er, its field for sports, its
ideological, cultural and profe~ional meetings. In these centers as a
,vhole, 2 nilllion young workers pursued courses of a technical nature.
Every Wednesday evening at 8: 15, they listened with comrades to a
youth program-perhaps talks or songs or tourist information-broad-
cast by all the radio stations of the Reich. All of them, students on vaca-
tion as well as workers on holiday with pay, met as comrades, equal in
everything, in the hundreds of campgrounds. There they engaged in all
kind of sports, such as swimming and horseback riding, and the camp-
fires in the evening were enlivened by group singing.
A network of 2,000 youth hostels provided with 25,000 beds gave lodg-
ing each year to hundreds of thousands of young excursionists. Many
were installed in or beside historic old castles. The food was excellent
and cost very little. The most stouthearted of the young people hiked in
groups, with tent and cooking utensils on their backs, through the most
beautiful regions of their country. Others-in 642 rural groups-went out
helping the country people harvest the crops.
'These young Gennans, coming from all walks of life, were profoundly
filled with the spirit of national community. But for all that they were not
narrow nationalists. Their leaders taught them all a reasoned love for
their own country but also opened their eyes to their higher fatherland:
Europe. No other country did as much at the time to develop the Euro-
pean idea: in the course of only the single year of 1936, 224,000 young
foreigners were received fraternally, as true comrades, in the camps and
youth hostels of the Reich, or in the homes of young Germans. In living
together, walking together, and engaging in all kinds of sports, they had
acquired a physical vigor and ajoy in living that was striking.
When receiving a Hitler Youth group at his chateau at Rambouillet,
President Lebrun had said to them: "You are the happiest young people
in the worldn It was true. Prime Minister Chautemps, though openly
anti-Nazi and a Freemason with apron, compass and square, had called
them "the best representatives of their country." "The day will come
when the German people will look on their young people with radiant
joy and pride." So spoke Adolf Hitler.
'!rained in that way patriotically, socially, and internationally, the hun-
dreds of thousands of young Gennans who left each year for the military
camps did not go in poverty or idleness, as in so many countries where
nlilitary service is drudgery. For them, it was an additional sharing in the
solidarity of their nation. Physically, too, they were ready. Their instruc-
tion in sports, their hard and joyous training in fields and mountains had
already halfway made soldiers of them.
A pennanent liaison united their organizations to the Wehrmacht The
Wehnnacht assigned instructors to them. The most famous of them bore
a name that would be known worldwide. He was a young colonel at that
tune. He wore round his neck the glorious insignia of the Order of Merit
His name was Erwin Rommel.
Another organization, fundamentally social, prepared young people
for genuine nonmilitary seIVice to the nation: that was the "Labor
Front," whose essential goal was to send Gennans of all classes through
work training.
The law of June 26, 1935, establishing this Arbeit.sdienst, stated: "All
young Gennans of both sexes mustseive their people in the Labor SeIVice.
In confonnity with the spirit of National Socialism, the Labor Service shall
inculcate in Gennan youth a sense of the national community and the new
conception of work based on the respect due manual labor." The works
the Labor SeIVice had to carry out were strictly works of public utility.
It was only after having lived firsthand an integral social life, mingling
constantly with workers and peasants, that a student was admitted to the
university, an officeholder into an administrative job, or a recruit into the
Wehrmacht. It was the socialization not of the machinery of the state but
of men themselves in their flesh and their brains.
For six months, with all rigorously equal, they polished each other's
characters. They lived in groups of seven in the camps or on construction
sites, frugally and rationally equipped, and canied out community works
of national interest. Six hours of manual labor every day. 'Iwo hours of
sport, political education and military preparation. Their "rifle" was a
spade. Their flag had a shovel on it. You saw them passing along the high-
ways, bare to the waist, bronzed by the sun.
"The young people brought together in the work camps," the historian
Mueller-Brandenburg wrote, _"must live a common life there, bonded to-
getl,er by pru1icipation in n1utual labors. The future officer, tl,e future

judge, tJ,e future e1nployer live there side by side with the locks1nith, the
fann ,vorker, u,e sailor, tJ,e 1nanual laborer, tJ1e textile worker. They eat
togetl,er, lodge togetJ,er, and lean1 to lo1ow each otl,er thoroughly in tlle
work and by the work, and in tl1e get-togetl,ers tl1ey spend in the evenings
,vith tl,eir leaders. The tilne then con1es when these young people realize
tl,at the notions of 'bourgeoisie' and 'proletruiat' are in the last analysis
only 1nental constn1ctions, and that they are all part of one ru1d the same
people."
Now tJ,at all of Hitler's social achievements have been destroyed by
the ,vorld upheaval of 1945, and tl1e young people of Europe are wander-
ing witl1out faitl1 and witl1out a vision of tl1e future, the evocation of that
epic of youtl1 is almost W1real. And yet tl1e writings of iluportant persons,
offoreigners who bore no love for Gem1any in their hearts, do still exist.
One of the most significant of these testimonies is the state111ent the am-
bassador of Great Britain at Berlin made after having seen tl1e young 1nen
n1arch by witl1 their shining spades: "Upon my return to London, I shall
do everything in n1y power to introduce an equivalent of the Arbeitsdi-
enst in Englru1d."
The British ctiplo1nat, in his "definitive repo1t," even added these sig-
nifi.cant lines: "The 'Kroft durch Freude' ('Strength Through Joy') move-
ment, tl1e care taken for the physical education of the nation, and, above
all, tlle Labor Service organization are typical examples of what a benev-
olent dictatorship can achieve.. . . It would be idle to deny tl1e ilnportance
of what tlle n1an has done who has given the German people back tl1eir
self-respect and a disciplined order."
Young men so prepared could not but form the most intrepid and the
most idealistic of warriors. They overran Europe ID 1939, 1940 and 1941,
not just witll tlle support of their tanks, but sustained by their ideal-an
ideal tllat no longer existed ID tlle opposing troops. Faith is the best of
weapons.
The spirit of the new Wehnnacht was int;ensely marked by tl1e spiritual
development that these hundreds of thousands of young men had expe-
rienced in their youth and labor camps. Just as the work was an honor,
bemg a soldier had become an honor. Only young men of unblemished
morals were admitted to tl1e anny. You didn't get shoved ID wholesale.
You were selected. Anyone who had undergone a "clishonorable convic-
tion" was excluded.
A detail that must be considered most astonishing in view of the po-

litical explosion that called forth Hitlerism in Germany: the young sol-
diers, during their entire military service, had to abstain completely
from all political activities. If they were members of the National So-
cialist party they ceased being registered as a member for the duration
of their service.
It has been said repeatedly that Hitler would use any means to get
votes at election time. Well, he himself prohibited the soldiers, almost all
of whom were from the Hitlerjugend, from voting or taking part in a ref-
erendtun. That was 500,000 votes, later more than a million votes, he
shunted aside that he could easily have garnered. Hitler forbade his sol-
diers access to the ballot box in order that the army might form but a sin-
gle unit, a single thought, and a single destiny.
Thus, posses.sing neither the mighty Maginot Line, nor the enormous
troop strength of the French, the Czechs, the English and the Poles, nor
the 10,000 am1ored units of the Soviets, Hitler was in the process of build-
ing tl1e most modem army in the world; smaller in numbers certainly than
the others, but inco1nparable in spirit. Nothing like it existed anywhere.
The old generals grun1bled now and then. Hitler made them uncom-
fortable. The tilting chairs in their offices were softer than the gun-turrets
of tanks. But they felt overwhelmed by the sacred fire of all this youth.
They remained silent.
Hitler, too, re1nained silent. His mortar was not yet hardened. Too vi-
olent a shock and the whole edifice might come down.
At that year's end of 1936, Hitler's political and social achievements
alone were stabilized. They were there for all to see and were found as-
tonishing. They piqued the curiosity of foreigners. Many came from
abroad to exrunine the phenomenon.
The great world gatl1ering in Berlin at the Olympic Games of 1936 was
going to show tl1e degree to which, on discovering the new Germany, for-
eigners felt as though caught by a magnet
Both the 1936 winter and summer games were held in Germany, the last year that both
Olympics were held in the same country. Twenty eight countries participated, and Ger-
man athletes took six gold medals, second only to Norwegian athletes, who took 15.
CHAPTER
HITlER AND THE OLYMPICS
n Aug. 1, 1936, amid decorations ofa grandeur never before

known, Adolf Hitler was going to inaugurate tlle Olympic
games at Berlin. 'They mark a high point, a sort of apoth-
eosis for Hitler and for the Third Reich," wrote the French
ambassador. For four years and throughout the world the
leader of the new Gennany had been pursued by an envious and frenzied
anti-fascis1n. Particularly relentle~ in tl1at pursuit were the communica-
tions media of the Jewish lobbY, the absolute master-even then-of tl1e
large-circulation newspapers and the big international news agencies.
The "Nuremberg Laws" only 10 months before the Berlin Olympics
had marked one of the summits of anti-Hitler agitation.
Strange as it may seem, these "Nuremberg Laws" had recognized the
Jews as Jews-as Jews having rights of their own, but also, obviously,
duties. For an Israelite nece~y does not have just rights, especially if
he is eajoying the hospitality of a foreign country and the advantages the
latter provides.
The Germans of 1935 meant to consider the race the Jews are so
proud of as a specific race.
So what of that? What else did the Jews do in 1948 when they set up
the state of Israel? They established, in their fundan1ent.al Mosaic laws,
the preerninence of their race, admitting non.Jews only as foreigners or
as subordinates-the Palestinians especially-who remain distinct from
the Jewish community.
5M I HITL.EH DEMOCRAT
Fron\ before tile tilne of Christ tlleir 1nillenary race had spread its ten-
tacles everywhere in tl1e world. Jews have always preseived their ethnic
characteristics witll tl\e greatest rigor. Even in Israel tl1e Jews see to the
n1ost severe n1aintenance of tl1eir morals and customs,jealously protect-
ing tile strict purity of tl1eir blood. That has been at tile very basis of their
historic swvival. TI1eir "religion" always opposes, often even with ex-
traordinary intolerance, any interbreeding witll otl1er races.
TI1at being so, what gives the Israelites tile right wherever they are
abroad to claim to p05.5ess at the san1e time tileir own nationality and the
nationality of tl1e otl1ers? AJapanese in Berlin was not at the same time
botll a Gennan and a Japanese. Is a Frenchman in Tel Aviv both a French-
n1an and an Israeli?
The fury with which Jewish racism stirred up tile whole world against
Hitler would soon have a boomerang effect and provoke the explosion in
September 1939 of World War II, in which the Jewish race would be the
first to pay the consequences.
However, in August of 1936 there were still a good many reasonable
men who retained their composure. Millions of undecided Europeans
asked tllemselves questions. What was Hitler all about?
Hitler's rumbling voice gave tile shivers to millions of non-Germans lis-
tening to the radio. The man was an enonnous question mark Thousands
were curious to know more about him.
That explains why countless foreigners flocked to Berlin on Aug. 1,
1936 at the opening of the Olympic Games. They came to see the athletes.
They came above all to see what this new, powerful, fascinating Germany
they'd heard so much bad about was really like. They vaguely felt that
the bill of indictment had to have been exaggerated. They even began to
feel a certain mistrust in the matter. They wanted to be able on tile occa-
sion of these Olympic Games to get a good look at Hitler right on the spot.
"Hitler," the ambassador of France at Berlin, M. Andre Fran~ois-Pon-
cet, explained, "has impressed Europe as being an extraordinary person.
He not only inspires fear or aversion; he excites curiosity; he awakens
sympathy; his prestige is growing; and the force of attraction that em-
anates from him is felt beyond tile bounds of his own country. Kings,
princes, illustrious visitors are thronging into the capital of the Reich, less
perhaps to attend the sporting events that are to take place here than to
draw near to this man of fate who appears to have the destiny of the con-
tinent in his hands, to have a close look at this Gennany that he has, in his
HITLER AND THE OLYMPICS I 505
irresistible embrace, transfonned and galvanized. And everyone here, in

the presence of organization without deficiencies, order and discipline
without a flaw, and prodigality without limits, goes into raptures. As a
matter of fact, the tableau is magnificent."
An enormous stadium-the biggest in the world-capable of holding
one hundred and ten thousand spectators, had been built amid the forests
and lakes west of Berlin.
"The stadium," Fran~ois-Poncet goes on, "seen from inside, is strik-
ingly beautiful. Large approaches pennit the crowds to fill it and to leave
it in a few moments without a crush. It has been provided with all the fit-
tings and improvements suited to its purpose. The locker rooms for the
athletes, installations reserved for the press, restaurants, the tribune for
the authorities, all leave nothing to be desired, while the reddish brown
sand of the track, the striking green of the grass, and the soft gray of the
tiers compose a hannony of colors that tempts the eyes."
Hitler had even intended for this grandiose stadium t.o be built of sand-
st.one and marble; only the huny had necessitated, against his will, the use
of cement.
This stadium, larger than the Coliseum of the Romans, was just one of
the grandiose buildings that Hitler wished to bestow upon the Third
Reich. Already at the time he had begun a new chancellery, with
grandiose drawing rooms, fine mosaics, columns worthy of Luxor, that
from 1938 forward would be the most imposing-and beyond a doubt
the most beautiful-of the seats of government of all the heads of state
in the world.
Other impressive palaces would house the Ministry of the Wehnnacht
and that of the air force. The stadium in the National Socialist Congress
center at Nuremberg, whose construction Hitler had ordered, would ac-
commodate 400,000 persons.
But it was Berlin above all that would be marked by grandeur. Hitler
wished to transform that rather commonplace and at times even shabby
capital from top to bottom. The plans he himself sketched still exist
They were breathtaking. Crossing the new capital there was to be an av-
enue five kilometers long lined with multiple and splendid buildings ex-
tending over an area of several million square meters: ministries, the
residence of the Fuehrer, a group of diplomatic residences with flat
roofs covered with immense terraces of gardens and foliage growing in
soil three meters deep. The triumphal arch spanning the avenue was to
be eighty n1eters high. The whole was to be do1ninated by the n1ost im-
posing d01ne on Earth, 1ising 300 1neters high and capable of accom-
1nodating 180,000 people.
TI1is was not a question of megalon1rulia on Hitler's part.
He had personally retained very 1nodest ways, continuing to keep his
little five-roon1 apartlnent in Munich, sun-ounded by other tenants, at the
top of a ndserable flight of stairs. It was tl1ere in 1937 that he would re-
ceive Mussolini quite plainly, and tl1en, in 1938, on tl1e day after Munich,
Mr. Chrunberlain.
A plate of pasta, an egg, a few cakes with crerun, water and a cup of
herbal tea sufficed hi.tu.
But he wru1ted his century to leave a 1nark forever on future ages, so
tl1at even if in titne his political work were effaced, grandiose marks of it
would re1nain. It is stone and marble that mark historical greatness.
Greece, motl1er of all civili1.ations, is tl1e Acropolis. Rome, mistress of the
world, is the Forum, the Coliseum, a hundred theaters, aqueducts and tri-
umphal arches ntarking out tl1e empire from Pahnyra to Volubilis.
As witl1 tl1e1n, the monuments of the Third Reich would say for eter-
nity what it had been.
Hitler hi1nself had painted a hundred sketches of this future en1pire of
stones, often in minute detail. He insisted on choosing the materials per-
sonally: tl1e red marbles, the limestones and the costly woods. To buy the
most perfect blocks of stone from Sweden he would not hesitate to pay
out every last scrap of foreign currency. He spent hours studying every
model
The world could collapse, but a thousand years after hi.In they would
find grandiose vestiges of his century, like the pyrrunids standing alone
but immortal in their moving sea of sand.
TI1e spectators of the Olympic games in Berlin had thus stepped right
into magnificence.
Hitler's car had traversed the 15 kilometers of the "Triumphal Way"
leading to tlle stadium, applauded by a crowd such as Berlin had never
known and which, at considerable effort, contained 40,000 policemen on
duty at the time.
One hundred thousand spectators standing with arms extended had
cheered hint at his arrival while trumpets sounded a strildng salute. The
runner carrying the Olympic torch had entered the stadiu1n and trans-
ferred the sacred flame to tl1e high torchere that would bum until the end
HITLER AND THE OLYMPICS I 507
of the grunes. Then there appeared the chorus of 3t000 members directed
by Richard Strauss, the greatest musician of the century. They sang
Deutschland Ueber Alles and The Horst Wessel Lied followed immedi-
ately by 11ie Olympic Hymn that Strauss had composed especially for
tllis grandiose world festival.
Buzzing around Hitler was a swarm of princes, kingst and prominent
personalities from all over the planet: Boris, king of Bulgaria; the crown
prince of Italy; Marie Jose, his wife, the sister of the king of Belgium; the
crown princes of Sweden, Greece and even faraway Japan; the sons of
Mussolini; and noted aristocrats from La.tint Anglo-Saxon and Scandina-
vian countries.
Hitler did not miss a day of the games, waxing enthusiastic, congrat-
ulating the Gern1an woman who had beaten the record in the javelin
tl1row as well as the Finns who had won the l0t00O-meter trial.
Even with Jewish or black athletes, Hitler was perfectly friendly.
Helene Mayert the women's fencing champion, was Jewish. So was
Rudi Ballt a hockey champion. Both represented Gennany.
With the dishonesty that is ever characteristic of anti-Hitlerism, quite
a scandal was created concerning tl1e American champion athletet a
black, Jesse Owens, winner of four gold medalst whom the Fuehrer, it
see1ned, had refused to greet. Fifty years later this fable was still being re-
peated. Owens hi.Inself has insisted on denouncing the inanity of this tit-
tle-tattle and has very handso1nely acknowledged that Hitler had
rendered him hon1age publicly and with kindness:
11
"When I passed before the chancellor, the champion statedt "he rose
and waved to 1net and I returned his salute in the same manner. I believe
that tl1e reporters have given proof of their bad taste in criticizing him."
The Olyinpic games came to an end on Aug. 16t 1936t in an atmos-
phere of triwnph while Richard Strauss's 3t000 choristers sang the hymn
11ie Games Are Ended.
Gennany could be proud of her successes, which brought proof of
the renascence of her youth in sport. One of the most notewortl1y of the
obseIVers, tl1e American historian John Tolandt would write most fairly:
"The games 1narked a nearly absolute Nazi triumph. The Gennans won
the greatest number of gold medals (35)t and the majority of the silver
and bronze 1nedals besides; and what was a great surprise, they beat the
Americans, who were left in second place witl1 57 points."
"A still more important fact," Toland addst "a good many visitors re-
turned fronl Gennany channed by tile cordiality of their hosts and im-
pressed by what tlley had seen of Hitler's Reich. The success of the games
was glorified afterward by a documentary in two parts filmed by Leni
Riefenst.ahl tl1at earned world acclaiin.... Any objective obseiver of the
Gerntan reality," Toland concludes, "cannot deny Hitler's notable achieve-
ments."
Hitler had made no secret of tile fact tllat he wanted much more than
external successes.
"The goal of our education," he explained to all those visitors, "is the
fonnation of character. We prefer 10 ldlograms less of lmowledge and 10
kilogramss more of character."
That, too, astonished the foreigners who had experienced the sophis-
tical tea~ of so many schools and universities tllat were turning out
pompous graduat.es by the thousands, their heads stuffed witl1 undigested
postulates, flabby in body and will, lacking initiative: nullities facing the
asperity of life's hai.ardous battles.
CHAPTER
THE WORLD 'VISITS HITLER
n organizing the 1936 Olyinpi.c Games, Adolf Hitler had taken care
that that there should never be any exaggerated propaganda Dur-
ing the weeks of the games political discussions had been all but
eliminated from the daily life of the Reich. Foreigners were invited
much more to festivities and theatrical productions than to political
discussions, which the regime, sure of itself, made a deliberate effort to
avoid.
The visitors,, Fran~ois-Poncet would later write, rather than going to
meeting after meeting, attended a succession of festive parties of an ex-
pansiveness and grandeur that had never been known in Gennany before:
Hitler; it was a question of which among the Berlin hotels would receive
its guests with the most t.aste and ,splendor.
Marshal Goering had recreated for his guests., in the gardens of his
ministry building, an enchanting 18th-centucy village that lacked neither
artisan workshops, nor the farrier's forge, .nor tl1e inn and its crockery
jugs, nor the relay of horses for the stagecoach. He had sumptuously re-
ceived his guests at a table of unusual cli1nensions that has once more
been described for us by the French ambassador, in great wonderment:
"At the Berlin opera, newly and lavishly hung with cream-colored
satin, Goering had organized a sumptuous dinner party followed bya ball.
·wooden flooring connected the stage to the hall; a profusion of footmen
in red livery and powdered wigs, holding aloft lanterns on long poles,
marked the table-area aisles swanning with a host of unifonns, glittering
510 I HlTI..EH DEMOCRAT
costtunes and won1en in fancy dres.5es."

Ribbentrop, for his part, had organized a reception at his splendid
Dahlenl villa, where he regaled seven hw1dred European guests with Pom-
mecy chmnpagne under a gigantic tent tl1at had been set up in the gardens.
As for Goebbels, he had invited more than 1,000 important people to
poetic Peacock Isle for an Italian Night It is clear from this choice how
conlpletely any narrow nationalism had been put aside.
Ainbassador Schmidt recounts that "there was dining and dancing
m1d ... interpreting. Lots of speeches, toasts, private conversations: 'Ack,
Hen· Sch1nid~ helfen Sie doch schnell einmal! /eh moechte mit Lord
Londonderry sprechen!'-'Monsieur Schmidt, deux mots seulement
a,vec Dr Goebbelsl'-'Do you know where Goering is?' That's what I heard
on all sides."
The festivities at the Goebbels's had very nearly been spoiled by bad
weather:
"As it rained during tlle day, planes have been sent out in all directions
looking for new supplies. The trees have become luminous candelabra.
The pontoniers of tlle Reichswehr have tllrown down a footbridge of
boats to link tlle island witll tlle land and with upright oars line the pas-
sageway for the guests, who are received and conducted to their places
by a bevy of girls dressed as Renaissance pages. At midnight rockets
shoot into tlle air in a spectacular fireworks display.
"Hitler," Benoist-Mechin goes on to say, "receives their majesties and
royal highnesses at his table. The splendid festivities fill the guests of
honor, the diplomats, and eminent personalities from all over the world
with astonishment and admiration."
They were even taken for a ride above Germany in Zeppelins so that
they could have a clear and close-up view of the new network of free-
ways.
"A real occasion" for them, they said.
Ambassador Schmid~ who was so attentive to Hitler at the time of his
glory and yet would be so small-minded in denigration of him when it
was all over, felt compelled to register the astonishment of these famous
foreigners for whom he acted as interpreter as he moved about and min-
gled with the guests.
"Many of them wannly expressed their admiration for Hitler, for his ef-
forts in favor of keeping the peace, and for the achievements of National
Socialist Gennany. Those days seemed to me then as a sort of apotheosis
THE WORLD VISITS HITLER I 511
for Hitler and tl1e Third Reich. I could clearly see in the course of these
conversations, which were usually quite short, that the foreigners almost
without exception regarded Hitler with great interest, not t.o mention with
tl1e greatest admiration.
"It was a fantastic spect.acle," he said in conclusion, "and everyone
who was there, whether later friendly or in the enemy camp, still remem-
bers it today."
Throughout tl1at year of 1936 which p3$ed so easily from the great tn-
mult of the reoccupation of the Rhineland and the uproar about the
"Nuremberg Laws" to the footmen in red livery and powdered wigs of the
dazzling festivities of the Olympic Garnes, there was a succession of visits
of very prominent persons from abroad, from French Minister Bastide
and the governor of the Bank of France, Labeyrie, to Lord Londonderry;
the British air secret.ary, and Sir Robert Vansittart, permanent secret.ary
of the Foreign Office.
Ambassador/mterpreter Schmidt wrote relative to these multiple con-
versations: "They confirmed that foreigners, at least those who came to
Germany that year, still considered Hitler with a growing and not at all
disparaging interest."
Afterward many of those visitors would change their minds when they
saw that peaceful and hardworking Germany was on the way to becom-
ing the first power on the continent, thus treading on the toes of the pro-
prietors of the past, who did not recognize the right of the modern world
to change drivers.
When the Reich had become twice the size of France in tem1S of pop-
ulation-after reuniting all her separate sons with the liberation of the
Austrians and the Sudeten Gennans in 1938 and 1939-and the Balkans
had become wide-open territory for the economic expansion of the Third
Reich, then the compliments were succeeded by the gnashing of teeth.
They were willing t.o admire Hitler, but only on condition that he never
surpass by so much as a rnillimeter the level marked on the Franco-
British standard.
In 1936, before those outbursts ofjealousy, Germany's recovery, pro-
gressing within four years from decay to rebirth, evoked sincere and
lively ast.onishrnent from every unprejudiced visitor.
In that summer of 1936, addressing his own people as well as those
abroad, Hitler had been able, proudly but without vain ostent.ation, to
draw up his balance sheet as a successful administrator:
512 I IIITLEH DEMOCHAT
How ourenenlies would have laughed if I had said to the1n on

Jan. 30, 1933 that at tl1e end of four years the ntunber of Gem1an
tmemployed would be down to less than a 1nillion; that the forced
e>.."J)ropriation of our countryinen would have co1ne to an end;
tl1at our inco1ne fro1n agriculture would be greater than in any
peaceti1ne year in our history;
That our aiu1ual national inco1ne would go fro1n 41 to 56 bil-
lion marks;
That the Gennan nliddle class and artisan class would expe-
rience an unilnagined develop1nent;
That our commerce would be reborn;
That our ports would no longer be ships' graveyards, and that
il11936, in our own Gennai1 shipyards, 640,000 tons of new ship-
ping would be under construction;
That illnumerable factories would have not just doubled, but
tripled and quadrupled the volume of their production;
That tl1e Krupp establishments would lrnow the full-tilne roar
of tl1e rolling nlills and power hrunmers;
And tl1at in all these enterprises, the principal driving force of
the endeavor would be not the unscrupulous gain of the individ-
ual but the devotion of all for the good of tl1e nation;
That the automobile factories would not just co1ne out of their
lethargy but grow ill such dizzying fashion tl1at the output of cars,
which was at46,000 in 1932, would rise to 250,000 in 1936; that in
four years the deficits of the nation and of the n1unicipalities
would be wiped out, and tl1at the surplus in tax revenues would
reach 5 billion marks annually;
That our railroads would be soundly managed ai1d our trains
the fastest in the world;
That the Gennan Reich would be provided with a network of
roads whose quality and beauty surpass anything of this kind ever
constructed since the beginning of civilization;
That of the 7,000 kilometers of freeway planned, 1,000 kilo-
meters would already be open for traffic and more than 4,000
under construction barely four years later;
That whole working-class housing developments, containing
hundreds of thousands of new houses, would be rising out of the
ground;
THE WORLD VISITS HITLER I 513
That hundreds and hundreds of new bridges would span the

valleys and rivers;
That the Gennan theater and Gennan music would celebrate
a resurrection worthy of the immortal masterpieces of our past;
That the entire Gennan nation would participate in this prodi-
gious spiritual renewal;
And that all this would be accomplished without a single Jew
having any part in the directing of the natl.on.
Yes, I'll say it again: what would the answe:r of our enemies
have been if I had told them that all this would be a reality in less
than four years?
Nevertheless, today, it has all been accomplished, and you
have only to look around you to convince yourself it is true.
The most unexpected visitor Hitler rec:eived in the autumn of 1936,

after this official statement, had been Gennany's most relentless enemy
durtng World War I,.Lloyd George, the fonner British prime minister, the
very same man who, on the day after the annisti.ce, had called for hanging
the Kaiser and for squeezing the Gennan lemon "wltil the pips squeak."
He bad also turned up in Berchtesgaden after Roehm bad been ellm•
inated and after the pro1nulgation on No~ 15, 1935 of the "antiJ'ewish"
Nuremberg Laws.
He did not see1n to be the least disconcerted by them.
He would not change sides either tmtil the Reich, after its complet.e re-
unification in 1938, had begun to weigh too heavy in the scales with which
her gracious British maj;esty measured the weight of various peoples.
In Septe1nber of 1936, when Lloyd George visited Hitler, he was over-
flowing with runiability.
Hitler, hand out to welcome him: "I am especially glad to receive the
man whom we here in Germany have always considered the real victor
of the World War." Lloyd George, beaming: "I consider myself very fortu-
nate to n1eet tbe man who,, after the defeat, has known how to get the
Gennan people behind hhn and going back uphill."
They spent the whole September afternoon together until seven
o'clock in the evening, long evoking me,mories of the war when the then
unknown corporal had so often fought against the Tommies of Lloyd
George.
Then they talked politics.
514 1 HITLER DEMOCRAT
Lloyd George accepted the responsibility for the blame Hitler laid on
tl1e alliances tl1at had been so fat.al for the peace of Europe in 1914 and
which the anti-Fascists of 1936 in Paris, Prague and Moscow wanted to
set up once n1ore, this time against the 'Third Reich.
"They have always been a dangerous thing," said Lloyd George spirit-
edly, shaking his mop of white hair. "They widened the last war like a
prairie fire. Without them the conflict might have been localized."
Similarly he nodded as.5ent when Hitler found fault with the unrea-
soning plots of foreign military staff officers who were politically ill in-
formed and had nothing but battles in mind. In London, these "staff talks"
had opposed his offers aimed at a rapprochement between the Gennan
and British first cousins. Lloyd George deplored the fact that his efforts
had been "unhappily thwarted."
The conve.rsation then turned to the social revolution of the Third
Reich. Lloyd George said: "National Socialism has undertaken experi-
ments in this area that are of great interest to England."
Hitler replied: "It is not a question of experiments, but of a plan that
has matured over a long period of time."
Lloyd George said he was convinced of it, "with a wann eloquence
that bordered on enthusiasm," Schmidt reports. "He (Lloyd George)
spoke of the measures taken to eliminate unemployment, of sickn~ in-
surance, social welfare work, and the use of leisure time. He had already
looked over a number of projects completed by the 'Labor Front' and
seemed very impressed by what he had seen.... The old victor of World
War I ended his visit with the young dictator of the Third Reich. They
agreed to meet again tlle next day at tea time, when Lloyd George planned
to bring his daughter Megan," Schmidt relates.
The young Megan was waiting impatiently for her father when he re-
turned to his Berchtesgaden hotel.
When she saw him get out of the Fuehrer's car, he was so radiant, his
eyes so sparkling and alive, and his gait made so youthful by the pleasure
of his interview, that Megan laughed and raising her ann said: "Heil
Hiller."
The old Welshman stopped short and grew solemn. He looked straight
at his daughter. "You're right, Heil Hiller," he replied. "I'll say it myself,
because he is truly a great man."
Upon his return to England, Lloyd George wrote for The Daily Ex-
press tllese lines tllat seem unprecedented to anyone reading them after
THE WOHLD VISITS IIITLEH I 515
half a century of incessant anti-Hitler brainwashing: "Hitler has single-

handedly lifted Gennany out of the depths. He is a born leader, a dynanlic
personality with a detennined will and a brave heart whom the old tn1St
and the young idolize." Arnold Toynbee, the celebrated British historian,
also "returned from Germany convinced of Hitler's peaceful intentions."
Alnid the fireworks, the festivities, the gold medals, Hitler had
nonetheless discreetly devoted the better part of his time to going for-
ward with the creation of his Wehrmacht
To be sure, it was not with the intention of ever hurling it against Paris.
Much less against London. That ought to have been clear to everyone for
some years. But the Soviet problem more and more disturbed hiln; in
truth, it haunted him. Stalin's annies at his doorstep in that autumn of
1936, as he reminded himself every hour of the day, were four times as
strong as his own in men and 10 times as strong in tanks.
Hitler was in no way ready to face the enormous power of the USSR.
The return to conscription, national 1nilitary service, the reconstn1ction
of the Wehrmacht, tentatively set at 36 divisions, all dated only from the
preceding year.
His orders concerning the war economy plan that he had commis-
sioned Goering to develop-the four-year plan-dated from that very
sunlffier.
If Stalin had not l<l.lled Marshal 'I\1khachevsky and 30,000 officers of
his annies, he could have destroyed Hitler before he had reached a 1nin-
imwn of power. That liquidation had forced a pause on the part of the
Russians in the nick of time.
But Stalin was a Communist, which 1neans he intended to conquer
the world. He was also, in another aspect, a successor of the czars, an
imperialist like the great Russian conquerors of former days.
The elimination of Tukhachevsky had simply staved things off for a
time. Hitler needed to make haste. He had at most only a few years in
which to achieve the complete reunification of the Gennans inside the
Reich (tl1at was done) and the Germans outside (still to do). The 10 mil-
lion con1patriots between the Danube and the footlillls of tl1e Sudetens
would not be gathered in lightly or without tl1e possibility of conflict.
The year 1937, a year of peace, would in reality be the armed vigil be-
fore Hitler entered forbidden territory.
Hitler waves to the crowd at one of the many Nuremberg Party Days held during his
tenure as German leader. NewscoM
CHAPTER
NUREMBERG IN THE
NATIONAl SOCIAllST MIND
he National Socialist Congress had become an annual session
of a giant parliament composed of a million and a half repre-
sentatives of the people, coming from the most varied re-
gions. Politically, it was the most "colossal" (as the Germans
say) expression of democracy that had ever been organized
anywhere in the world. Such an event had never before been seen, and
nothing like it would ever afterward be seen again. The Nuremberg Con-
gress was a unique phenomenon in the political history of Europe.
Every year in the month of September, Nuremberg became the mecca
of National Socialism. In 1927 it was only a handful of militants following
a virtually unknown Adolf Hitler who met there. In 1933 they came in a
crowd of 400,000. In 1937 they were a million and a half. From every point
of view, tl1ese gatherings were astounding.
Just to transport these million and a half deputies of the nation, a fan-
t.astic amount of railroad equipment had to be mobilized: 4,000 special
trains, tens of thousands of railroad cars lined up like ants on dozens of
kilometers of track Then that immense host ofpeople had to be received,
t.o be given directions and to be fed.
All the hotels of Nuremberg together could hardly shelter a hundredth
part of the participants. And so entire towns of thousands of tents were
erected t.o shelter these crowds that were equivalent in number to a hun-
518 I lll'fl.EH DEMOCRAT
dred divisions of infantry.

TI1ey would need not just a roof> but also hundreds of n1obile kitchens,
sanitary facilities, first aid stations and inf01n1ation bootl1S, and tllousands
of Red Cross nurses. And all tllat provided witll mathe1natical precision.
Every one of tllese human ants had to be able to find his tent, his cot and
his food by knowing exactly at every nlinute where he had to go> how he
,vas to get tllere and for what purpose.
Aniving fro1u tile 1nost faraway villages of the Reich, often knowing
notlling of tlle town of Nure1nberg, the tnillion and a half participants
couldn't tun1 aroWld without knowing the exact geographic point and
tlle exact hour where and when, for exmnple, a youth would find the
Grand Anuy of Youth> a wo111an her wo1nen's organizations, the militant
his SA colunu1, or the worker his professional organization or his section
of the Labor Fronl
Only Gem1an discipline, tl1e Gennan genius for organization, could
keep this gigantic conglo1neration of hmnan beings from beco1ning entan-
gled in in1possible disorder. Year after year tllere would be 1nore partici-
pants attending. And year after year tlle arrival, the stay, tJ1e depruture of
tllis fantastic nligration would be more flawless.
Moving two or tllree anny corps took a Gen. Grunelin two or three
weeks of shilly-shallying. Here, in just a few hours, the equivalent of tl1e
whole French peacetilne anny was got under way. A fonnidable lesson
for future nlilitary operations.
The proof was given and repeated each year tllat it was perfectly pos-
sible to transport a nlillion and a half soldiers in a matter of hours witl1out
tlle slightest hitch; that the railroads were capable of moving the entire
Gennan anny from one end of tile country to tlle other on schedule to
within a quarter of an hour. Where else had a maneuver like that ever
been organized and perfonned witll such matllematical success?
On the return, just as on the anival, tl1e hundreds of divisions of civil-
ians were lodged and fed. Their participation was orchestrated. We can
look at photos of the period, study each sequence of the admirable fihn
Triumph of the Will produced by Leni Riefenstaltl in 1934: each human
fonnation is perfectly aligned, each avenue is clear, like a stream. Not
even a stray dog in the empty space. Not a single lainp that isn't burning.
TI1e ceremonies mlfolded with more 1najesty than at Saint Peter's in
Ro1ne.
Hitler comes forward, absolutely alone, on a paved avenue 1nore than
NUREMBERG IN THE NATIONAL SOCIALIST MIND I 519
a hundred yards wide, runid 30,000 flags like flames, between a million
and half men and women holding their breath.
Writes French historian Benoist-Medlin:
Nothing has been onlitted to obtain the desired effect, a pa-

rade of a hundred thousand SA, pounding the pavements of the
town for five hours, a forest of standards in which the blood-red
emblems and the eagles of the party dominate, deafening fan-
fares, salvos of artillery, torchlight tattoos uncoiling their serpent
of fire between the illuminated facades of the medieval town, bat-
teries of searchlights aimed skyward, weaving a vault of light
above the Luitpoldshain runphitheater: everything contributes to
create an impression of ordered power from which the most
skeptical visitors return astounded. It is i.tnpossible to resist this
swirl of colors and songs and light whose intensity no report, no
filln will ever reproduce. For nearly a week the crowd has been
swiln1ning, rolling i.t1 a tidal wave of emotion.
Tilis Frenchman is not the only one to describe that emotion. Many
others have done it. And the agreement of these foreign witnesses is elo-
quent What struck the1n tl1e 1nost were the preoccupation with, the con-
cern for, tl1e unalterable rites, and the almost religious aspect of the
succession of tl1e ceremonies.
For Hitler, who entered Nure1nberg to the ringing of all the bells of
the town, the basis of all faith was dogn1a. And dogina by nature is im-
mutable and eternal. Truth can never change its face. To touch it up would
be to detract from the mystery, to bring it in question. Everything in the
history of National Socialism would be marked not only by the concern
for greatness but by the supre1ne inunutability of the gestures which sanc-
tify the ideal, the conviction, the bond, the gift
Every detail had been fixed forever. The speaker's platform, atop 30
granite steps, rose up like a warship. It stood out against a background of
bright light It was crowned with oak leaves surrounding a hooked c~
worked with gold. TI1e stadium, where a million and a half faithful sup-
porters breatlllessly waited, was as vast as a metropolis. The grandstands
the1nselves could hold 150,000 guests.
During the course of the week, the covered auditoriwn harbored by
tunlS the youth, the women, the cow1try people, and t11e factory workers,
the &S and tJ1e SA. Hitler spoke before tl1em 15 to 20 times during tl1ose
days.
TI1e stadhun itself was gigantic, surroWlded by columns three times as
tall as tJ1ose of tl1e Acropolis. TI1e colunms were sunnounted by eagles of
granite and joined togetl1er by tens of tl1ousands of flanling banners with
swastikas tunling in tl1eir solar disks. Streams of blue vapor rose from tall
basins.
Hitler had even invented an entirely new fonn of architecture that was
made not of stone but of light. He'd had hundreds of air defense beacons
installed on the four sides of the giant site. Their beams of light rose up
very high and very straight in the night like the pillars of an unreal cathe-
dral. It was quite a fabulous imaginary construction, worthy of Zeus, mas-
ter of light and of the night of the heavens. Then, like a prophet, Hitler
came forward.
Here is how Robert Brasillach, the most inspired French poet of the
century, describes Hitler upon his podium:
Here's the man now standing upon the rostrum. Then the flags
unfurl. No singing, no rolling of the drums. A most extraordinary
silence reigns when, from the edge of the st.adiurn, before each of
the spaces separating the brownshirt groups, the first ranks of stan-
dard-bearers emerge. The only light is that of the cathedral, blue
and Wtreal, above which one sees butterflies spiraling: airplanes
perhaps or simply dust But a spotlight beam has alighted on the
flags, emphasizing the red mass of them and following them as they
advance.
Are they advancing? One wishes rather to say that they flow.
That they flow like the flow of crimson lava, irresistibly, in an enor-
mous gliding rush, to fill the gaps prepared in advance in the brown
granite. Their majestic advance lasts nearly 20 minutes. And it is
only when they are close to us that we hear the muffled sound of
their tread. Up to the minute when they come to a halt at the feet
of the st.anding chancellor, silence has prevailed. A supernatural
and unearthly silence, like the silence for astronomers of something
seen on another planet Beneath the blue-streaked vault reaching to
the clouds, the broad red streams of lava are now grown still. I do
not believe I have ever in my life seen a more prodigious spectacle.
NUREMBERG IN THE NATIONAL SOCIALIST MlND I 521
That prodigious spectacle was not born of chance, but from the mind
of an organizer and an artist of genius.
Each day had its special progrmn devoted to a quite distinct se,ct.or of
the public. Another Frenchman, the historian Andre Brissaud, who is ag-
gressive and often urtjust when he speaks of Hitler, has .aJso described
one of these ceremonies which he calls [a] "Hitler service":
Under the blazing Sun 52,000 young men of the Labor Service
present their shovels in a virile offertory. Then, when they resume
their at-ease position, one of their leaders, facing them at the foot
of the tribune, snaps:
"Where do you come from, comrade?"
A voice from that host of brownshirts responds.:
"From Thueringen." (Thuringia)
"From Hesse."
"From Schlesim" (Silesia)
Then come the traditional questions:
"Are you ready to bring fertility to Gennan soil?"
Fifty-two thousand young men respond wid1 a single voice:
•'We are ready."
"Are you ready to make every sacrifice for the Reich?
"We are ready.»
This singular and impressive:spoken chorus lasts nearly 20
minutes.
Afterward the 52,000 men in brown, with much fervor and
gravitY, sing their song of heroes and otJ1er things as well.
The dnun rolls.
Silence is established. They meditate. They evoke the dead,
the soul of the party and of the nation as one~
Finally the Fuehrer speaks, bringing the collective emotion to
a white heat 'Iransported by passion, his nostrils quivering, his
eyes flashing, Hitler is the Nazi faith~ The violence, the fierce en-
ergy, the triumph of the will. His voice, broadcast by loudspeak-
ers, takes on a superhuman dhnension. A hypnotic pbenon1enon
takes place-giganti~, stupefying.
Anotl\er day it was tile ceremonial of the cult of the "flag of the blood"
(Blutfalme), tl1e standard tl1at was soaked with the blood of Hitler's com-
panions on Nov. 11, 1923, tlle day after the Munich putsch, when the
Bavarian police killed seven of the National Socialists around the young
Fuehrer. The new flags received the consecration of the "flag of the mar-
tyrs" at the foot of tlle monument commemorating them.
The Gennan autllor Joaquim Fest, a notorious anti-Nazi, has described
tllis ceremony:
Finally, starting from the "Luitpoldshain" accompanied by two

disciples keeping their proper distance, Hitler marched to the
monument, taking the wide ribbon of concrete (now called the
"Avenue of the Fuehrer") between several hundred thousand men
of the SA and the SS lined up in stately array. While the flags were
lowered, Hitler was motionless, deeply immersed in his thoughts,
like a heraldic figure.
Citing an official account, Fest adds:
The beams of 150 gigantic searchlights pierced the overcast

sky of a gray-black night. High in the air, on the surface of the
clouds, the shafts of light came together to form the figure of a
square.... The image is gripping.... Stirred by a light wind, the
flags framing the stands tremble slightly in the sparkling light.
The main speaker's platform comes into view in a blaze of light.
.•• To the right and to the let\ flames shoot out of immense cups
supported by pillars. From the opposite stands, on command, a
flood of more than 30,000 flags pours toward the center, the tips
of the staffs and the fringes of silver glittering in the illumination
of the searchlights.
As always, Hitler was the first victim of this production made
of light, of crowds, of symmetry and of "life's tragic awareness."
It was precisely in these orations made before the "first militants"
and after the minute of silence observed in honor of the dead that
Hitler frequently found his speech marked by a sort of exaltation
and rapture: on these occasions and in a few extraordinary
words, he has celebrated a sort of mystic communion before the
spotlights sweep down on the cent.er of the stage, and the flags,
the unifonns and the musical instruments come ablaze in flashes

of red, silver and gold.
A newspaper, Niederelbischen Tageblatt, has preseived some of

tl1ese invocations. [Note: this paragraph is lined out in the original French
text. We put it back in because we find the unguided leap to the following
paragraphs confusing without it-Ed.] Hitler exclaimed:
I have always had the feeling that for as long as the gift of life
is granted a man, he must retain his nostalgia for those with
whom he has fashioned his life. What would my life be without
you? That you have found me and believe in me has given your
life a new significance and imposed new duties on you. And that
I have found you, that alone has made my life and my struggle
possible.
And this:
How could we not feel in this hour the miracle that has
brought us together? You heard a man's voice in the past, and it
struck your heart, it awakened you, and you have followed that
voice. You have followed it for years without even having seen
the man who had that voice. You have only heard a voice, and
you have followed it
The tone of the speeches had messianic echoes. Hitler added:
We all meet here again, and the miracle of this meeting fills
our souls. Not every one ofyou can see me, and I cannot see each
of you, but I feel you and you feel me. Is it not faith in our people
that has made big men of us from small, rich from poor; and that,
discouraged and faltering though we were, has made brave and
valiant men of us?
At tlle end of a week it was time for the parting of this million and a
half men and women who had renewed their vows as if they had been
crusaders, or members of a religious order.
Once again it is the French poet Robert Brasillach who evokes this
hour of departure:
524 I HlTLEll DEMOCRAT
Deutsch/and Ueber Alles is sung and The Horst Wessel Lied

soaring witl1 tl1e spirit of conu-ades ldlled by tl1e Red Front and by
the reactionaries-and tl1e song of the soldiers of the war:
"I had a co1nrade,
"A better one I'll never have...."
Then still otl1er songs, coinposed for the congress, which har-
1nonize easily with the fresh night, the gravity of the hour, the
n1any beautiful and n1elancholy voices, and with all the musical
enchantJnent witl1out which Gen11any can conceive nothing, nei-
tl1er religion nor fatherland, nor war, nor politics nor sacrifice.
Brissaud adds: "Then there is the intenninable torchlight tattoo

through the streets of Nuremberg. Groups of tl1e SA, of the Hitler Youtl1,
or of the SS 1narch tirelessly by, lighted only by the glerun of their
torches."
Like evecyone else, s01ne of the most prominent persons of distinction
fron1 abroad ,vere seized by the popular wave.
The entire diplomatic corps was invited by Hitler and put up in the
Nure1uberg station itself in two sumptuous special trains provided witl1
club cars, dining cars, sleeping cars, bathrooms and even hairdressing
salons.
The French ambassador, Franc;ois-Poncet, even spoke to the Congress
of 1937. He would sum up his feelings ahnost witl1 dread:
During those eight days, Nure1nberg was a town given over

completely to joy, an enchanted town, ahnost a town tllat escaped
from reality. That atmosphere, combined with the beauty of the
spectacles and the magnificent hospitality, greatly impressed the
foreigners. It created an impression very difficult to resist. When
they went back home, they were captivated and won over.
The arnbassadorfmte1preter Paul Sclunidt, commissioned to escort

the rich and famous, has described the sensation:
On the day when Hitler made his grand triun1phal pro1nenade

at Nuremberg, I happened to be in a open car with the most iln•
portant French and English guests, only a few meters behind the
dictator's car.... We could thus observe hhn from very close up
and also especially the crowds cheering him from both sides of
the road.
The procession, triumphal in the true sense of the word, took
more than an hour to make its way through the old town. The im-
pression produced by these m~es of people cheering Hitler as
though in ecstasy was extraordinarily powerful. Once again I noted
with what an expression of devotion, with what biblical trust, the
people gazed on Hitler, seeming to be under a magic spell. The
thousands and thousands of spectators all along the route were as
though seized by a collective rapture at the sight of him. They held
out their anus and saluted him with rousing shouts. Moving along
for an hour in the middle of this frenzied outburst was a real phys-
ical ordeal, which left us exhausted at the end of the trip. All power
of n1oral resistance seemed paralyzed; we almost had the feeling
of having to restrain ourselves to keep from joining in with the gen-
eral ecstasy.... I could see that the English and the French often
had tears in their eyes from the effects of the inner emotions
caused by all they were seeing and hearing. Even journalists as
blase as Jules Sauerwein of Le Matin and Ward Price of The Daily
Mail, who were in my car, were literally groggy when we arrived
at the end of the route.
The Alnerican joun1alist Richard Helms, special envoy of the United

Press, who n1anaged to get to the Nuremberg palace, where Hitler was re-
ceiving his guests at the end of the festivities, would make this droll com-
ment: "When I got there myself, I was suffering from megalomania. I
decided that I must be nine feet tall even though the cheers had not been
addressed to me."
Benoist-Mechin concluded:
When all is said and done, what we saw at Nuremberg was no

longer tl1e party; it was tl1e entire Gennan nation offering itself
the spectacle of its own rediscovered power.... What was forged
here was a mystique powerful enough to triumph over individual
feelings and cast them in the crucible of a single faith.
At tl1e end of four years of stubborn st111ggle, Hitler had thus trans-
formed his people.
He had n1ade a unity of them, hard as steel.

Even tlle anuy would be welded to that unity hencefortl,: the Weluma-
chtspent eight days at Nuremberg fraternizing with the people, parading
jointly witll t1,e1n witll their new t.anks, their new cannon and above all
witl1 tl1eir new spirit
Hauled out of tJ1e wreckage of 1918, Germany at year's end in 1937
had a greater solidarity than ever before in her histocy. The first stage of
the Hitler revolution was now completed.
From tl1e Nuremberg stadium Hitler gazed down at his vibrant people.
He had completed their political unification: no longer were there either
states or parties locked in petty rivalcy; their social unification: the
cl~, fonner)y rivals, now fonnedjust one team; their militacy unifica-
tion: there was now just one anned force, built for all, open to all. Still to
be achieved was the racial and geographical unification.
Beyond the border to the southeast stood 10 million Germans of Aus-
tria and the Sudetens, already conquered politically, and waiting impa-
tiently for their church bells to sound the German hour.
Hitler, creator of the Greater Reich, was moving toward them in the
full assurance of their unanimitY, his eyes fixed on the destiny to be sub-
dued. ...
PHOTO SECTIOII
Left, Degrelle was a

vibrant and energetic
Catholic Nationalist
whose Rexist move-
ment commanded
more than a fifth of
the Belgian elec-
torate.
Right, an advertisement to hear

Degrelle speak. In 1930, Degrelle-
a Belgian Walloon-founded the
Rexist movement, based on the idea
of Christus Rex, or Christ as King.
528 I I IITLEH DEMOCRAT
Above, Degrelle speaks to well

wishers from a train during a polit-
ical campaign stop.
Left, Degrelle salutes a cameraman during campaigning. His Rexist movement would
command 30 percent of the vote in some provinces during the 1936 Belgian parlia-
mentary elections.
Above, a rare picture of a bearded Degrelle. Above right, Degrelle speaks to Flemish
Belgians about the need to resist communism. Degrelle was tapped by the Germans
to lead Belgium after the end of German occupation.
PHOTO SECTION 529
Here, Leon Degrelle is arrested by French police in Belgium, who suspected him of
collaborating with the National Socialist government. He was detained in France
until the collapse of that government, then liberated by the Germans. Then he en-
listed In the German military. HULTON/GETTY PHOTO ARCHIVE
5:\0 I I IITI.EH DEMOCHAT
Above, Degrelle (coming down stairs} is shown at his brother-in-law's funeral during
World War II. Below left, Degrelle in leather jacket and the unitorm of the Wallonian
brigade of the Waffen-SS. Below right, Degrella speaks at Messeritz.
PI IOTO SECflON 531
Here, Private Degrelle announces his enlistment in the Wallonian Brigade, urging
his fellow Belgians to support the German war effort. Above right, the Belgian Wal-
loons were originally intended as a reconstituted Belgian Army, but were later ab-
sorbed into the Waffen-SS and deployed on the Eastern Front.
Degrelle, a radical Catholic politician who had helped preserve the Church against
Bolshevism, was briefly ex-communicated by the Church's left-wing leadership for his
support of fascism. He had his ex-communication lifted when it appeared the
Church's allies in the West might lose the war. Here he and several of his men re-
ceive Holy Communion on the front lines.
5.12 I HITLER OEMOCHAT
Above Oegrelle is surrounded by a mass of Belgian supporters.
Upon his liberation from a French prison, Oegrelle

joined the Volunteer SS Brigade Walloon as a pri-
vate, but was quickly promoted and ended the war
as Brigade Commander.
PI IOTO SECTION 533
Degrelle decorates members of the SS Brigade Walloon who participated in the de-
fense of Cherkassy, a Ukrainian city which they heroically fought before it was taken
by the Soviets on Dec. 14, 1943.
Degrelle's family was kidnapped by the British and Americans after the war, and his
children were separated and given new families and new names. He struggled to
find them with the help of Spanish intelligence agents and friends in the remnants of
European National Socialism. In the end, he was able to seize his children from their
foster parents and reunite them with him in Spain.
5.1-l I Iln'I..EH DEMOCRAT
Above, Oegrelle appears with his daughter Anita in 1945. Below, Degrelle and a grown-
up Anita in Spain in the 1980s. Degrelle proudly attended her marriage in Spain.
..,,.·,
~
PHOTO SECTION 535
Degrelle was condemned to death by firing squad in Belgium, but escaped to Spain,
where he lived until his death in 1994. To avoid turning him over to the capitalist
West and their collaborators, the Spanish gave Degrelle a new name and appointed
him director of a state-owned construction company. The actor who played the fic-
tional Zorro at the time was a big fan of Degrelle's.
Above left, Degrelle in the courtyard of his Spanish casa in Madrid. Right, Degrelle
shows off the Rittenkreuz he was awarded by Adolf Hitler. •1f I had a son, I'd wish
him to be like you," Hitler told Degrelle.
5:16 I lllTI.EH DE~tOCUAT
Oegrelle spent much of his late life studying and expanding on the idea of National
Socialism. He was forever writing and recording his own lectures on the war. At the
time of his death, he was still working on a huge project on World War II history.
Here, Degrelle works on a chapter of his Hitler Democrat, published by TBA in 2012.
This is only one of 14 volumes Oegrelle planned to publish on World War II.
PI IOTO SECTION 537
Top, Gen. Degrelle donned his Waffen-SS uniform for this photo taken in the late
1980s. Degrelle achieved the rank of colonel in the German military. He was promoted
to general at the close of the war by Heinrich Himmler but few recognized the promo-
tion as Himmler had seen his duties diminished by that time. However, after the war
he was promoted again to general by Spain's Francisco Franco. At the close of the war,
Degrelle survived a near-fatal crash landing in his Heinke! 111 on the beach of la Con-
cha in San Sebastian, Spain, in May 1945. He sought asylum from Spain.
S.'\8 I HITLER DEMOCRAT
This autographed photo of Adolf Hitler shaking hands with Leon Degrelle, snapped
during world War II, was presented to TBA publisher Willis Carto and his wife in 1981
by Degrelle himself. Degrelle's notation reads: "For my friends Elisabeth and Willis
Carto with all my affection, L Degrelle:
INDEX
A Dcm,teint Gennan Na.Uonal Socialist, 298
Alexander I, King of Y1tgoslavia. ~21 Dcrtl\ier, Frcncll General, 3-17--·Ms
Alexander tbe Great" Emperor or Macedonia. 22; 27, &rtrruid, AM., French .Joumruist, •162
3-19 Binion, Rudolph, Jewish Doctor, -10-60
A.lcxandrovsky, Viktor, USSR Diplomat, ,17Gt 48:li 486, Bismarck, Otto von, Gemw, Chancellor, 25, 68, 113,
Alexelcv, Nicholac;, Sovict-Genuan Double .Agent, ,18,1 11.5,. 117, 117,
Allen, British Lord, 219 Bisson, French General, 346
Aloisi 1 Italian Diplomat, 3'28.329 Blum, Leon, Frenclt.Jewisb Prime Minister, 200, 3.52,
Amann, Max, Gennan National Socialist,. 269, 29-1 422, •128-431, ,151~153~ 462-16-1, 467-173
Arcllimba,td. Leon, French Historian, 3'11 Blumel, Leon Blum's Chier of Staff, 428
Aristolle, Greek Philosopher, 25 Bonap.111.e, Napoleon, Eml)(!ror or France, JIO, 22, Zt,
Augereau1Pierre, French General. 3itG 27, 186, 19.I, 211, 282, 290, 345,.3,19, 376, 38 l, 383,,
Aust, Hemumn, Gem1an Industrialist, 157 ,108, 4tl, 441 1 4561 4S.5, ,J97, 547
Ax,e)rodeI Jewish Conmmnislt 52~, •126 Bomwre, French General; 3'16
Bonnatt\Y, French General, 3:16, 348
B Born1ard1 Eduard, Frcncl1 General, 3.16
Bach, Johann ScbastLm, Genttan Composer, 158 BoOSt KingofBulgaria1507
BacHnguet., French Politician, 3.57 Boticelllli, Sanclro,.Artist, 158
Badoglio, Pietro, Italian General, •161 Bradbm:y, John, British Diplolllat, H>i
Balding, Genuan SA C-0mmru1der, 405 Brn:ndeis, Gem,an.Jewish Communist, 5..1
Baldwin. Sranley, Bnlish Prime Minister, 186, ~, B~mach, Robert, French Poet, 520, 523
11'1 I, ,t46, 11'18 Bra1m, Max, French Comnumi.st, 201, 203
Brulcstcdt~ Otto, Munich Separatist, 205 Ormme., Hehuicl1i Genuan Weimar-era Reporter, 3il
Ballcstedt1Rudi, Gem1ru1-Jcwish Athlete, 507 Brecht, Berthold, Gennan.Jewish Composer, 55
Bardoux, Jacques1 Frencll Historian, 385 Briand, Aristide,.Frcncl, [)jplomal1 449
Bannal, Jtdius, Gem1an Jewish Organized Crime flg. Brimt~iner, Gennan Prison Doctor, 300
ure, 3.53-354 Brissa.ud, Andre, French llisto:rian, 53, 174, 180-181,
Barthou, Louis, French Minister; 22S, 235-236, 238, 200, Zl7, 3i9, :JSil, 38-i,.38.S, :m, 39-l-305, 398, 40 I,
353, 361-302, 421, 425 40.1, 416. 521,624
Barto1 •Sidney, British. Foreign lfiniste~ 46,1 Bri7.at, Rayrnoncl, Frend, llistorian, 58
&.5(ide, French banker, 611 B.ronstcin~Trotsky, Leon, Soviet Red Army ,Com-
Bauer, Gustav, Gennan.Jewisll Communist Prim.e n ancler, 33, 83, •l81-4Bl, 4871 648
Minister, 00 Brucknum, Hungarian Editor; 155
Bauer, Hans, Gemum Genernl / Hitler's Pilot, 166 Bruclanan, Elsa, Wife of Bmckman, 155
Banffre, Andre. FrencJl General, 473 Bnme, French GenemlJ3:15-3-16
Baumann, Genoan Professor1 &1 Bnuling,, Heinrich, Gennan Chancellor, 97,100, 106,
Bauricdl!, Anllreas, Gennan National.Socialist,. 200 114,398
Bayard, General, 282 Buddlm, Indian Prophetl 25
Bea,'Cfbrook, British.Jewish Publisher, 71 Budenny, Semyon, Soviet General, 489
Beck, Ludwig, Gcm1an General, 181, 471
Beltre11s, Hennmu1, Gennan ~ Geneml, 485 C
Bendt, "'Gem1an Lieutenant, Hitler's commanding or~ Caesar, Jlllius, Emperor or Rome, 24
Ciccr,.. 81 Caillaux. Joseph, F'reltch Prime Minbtcr, 431
Benes, Edouard, Czech Diplomat, 322-323 CaM1t, John., Swiss Priest, :25
B<?nes, Edouarcl, Czech General, 4791 481, 483-4&1, , Cambon, Jules, French Amb~lor, Zll
Benoist.Mcchin,.J ~ le~ French historian, 53-64, 112, C·tHtbrome. PietTC, Frend, General, 3-16
l&l,.100-197, 199-201, 20-1·206,200, 215, tM, 226- Campbell, British Diplomat, 361
227, 237, 2(13-246, its, ?.00-251, a11, a21, 3'l4-:t25, Canaris,. Wilhelu1., Gcnnan Am\Y Intelligence Chiet
329-330. 341, 359-361 •18.5-486
Bcraud, French Journalist, 227 Cantacuzene1 Elsa. Htuigarian PrinC('SS, 155
540 I HITtER DEMOCRAT
Carillo, Sp.,nish Comm,ml<;t, 465 Dante, (Alighieri), Italian Poet, 25

C.art.it'r, ~lllOll<I, Prench Ulc;torian, ro, 37, 48-19, 63, D'arc, Jo.,n, French Saint, 211
57,59, 70,168,163,167, 175-176,295 Oard, Emile, French l.A?gate, 174
C:uto, Willis, Am<'rican P\lblishcr, 16 DarhU\, Francois, French Admiral, 469
Q\..~.ls, Allan, Historian. 8, 19 Darre, Richard, GemUU\ National Socialist, 165,416
0:-mtti, Italian D4llomat, 444 Darrer, Gennan General, 271
Owx-rt. French General, 291,305,308,334,336,342, Daudet, Leon, French Historian, 428
3-15, 391, 522 Davout, French General, 347-348
Chall<', French General, 297 de Broqueville, Charles, Belgian Premier, 328
Chamberlain, Houston Stewart, British Prime Minis- de Gaulle, Charles, French President, 232, 297, 406,
ter, 21, 25, 160, 236, 44~ 449,479, 506 426,476,492,494
Chambedain, Neville, British Prime Minister, 446, 606 de la Goaquina, Rubio, Spanish Commwust, 13
Chapoclmikov, Soviet General, 481 de Maistre, Joseph, French Philosopher, 408
Clwlicr,Jean, French TV Producer, 14 De Mon, Suison Jake, Zionist ~assin, 13
Chastenet, Jacques, French Historian, 211-212, 229, de Vandoucourt, Guillaume, French General, 346
441,, de Vauban, Sebastian, French Engineer, 194
Chautemps, French Olbinet Minister, 354, 498 Deat, Marcel, French Minister of the Air Foree, 439
Chem~ld, Vlado, Macedonian Nationalist, 421 Debeney, French General and Historian, 340
Chevalier, French General, 346 Debilly, French General, 345
Chiappe, French Police Chief, 356 Degrelle, Leon, Author; Rexist Leader of Belgiwn,
Child, American Ambassador to Paris, 16.5 7-19, 488, 627-637
Chilston, British Amb~r to Soviet Union, 478 Degrelle, Jean, Wife of Leon Degrc]le, 19
Chopin, Frederic, French Composer, 158 Delbos, French Minist.er of Foreign Affam;, 472
~ Jesus, Prophet, 25 Delft, Artist, 168
Churchill, \VInston, Prime Minist.erofBritain, 7, 9, 25, D'Enghien, French Duke, 408
192-193, 201,206, 211-215, 220,223, 225-227, 229- Denildn, Russian General, 481
231,339, 36.5, 40'2-403, 407-408, 441, 444-445, 451, Dertres, French General, 348
461 Desolzeaux, French General, 346
Ciano, Italian Foreign Minister, 463 Dibelius, Otto van, Gennan Evangelical, 48
Cicero, Roman Senator, 25 Dietrich, Sepp, Gennan SS and Sixth Army Com-
Clarke, British Ambassador to France, 245 mander, 376, 384
Clause\\itz., Carl von, German General, 25 Dietrich, Otto, Hitler's Press Attache, 402
aemenceau, French Premier, 34 Dingfelder, Johannes, Gennan National Socialist, 66
aemeoceau, French President, 167, 424 Disraeli, Beltjamin, British.Jewish Prime Minister,
Clemenceau, Georges, French General, 194-195, 197, 218
205 Dodd, William, American Ambassador, 166
Cooper, Abraham, Zionist Rabbi, 14-15 Dodd, Martha, Daughter of American Ambassador,
Cot, Pierre, French Air Minister, 232-233, 236 166
Craig, &!ward Gordon, British Ar1ist, 40 Dollfuss, Egelbert, Austrian Chancellor, 183
Craigie, Robert, British Diplomat, 226 Doumergue, Gaston, French President, ITT, 231,352,
Cuno, \\''ilhelm, Gemlan Chancellor, 170 3.56-358, 361~62, 364-36.5, 390,411
Cun.on, British Foreign Secretary, 167 Dreesen, German National Socialist, 401
Drexler, Anton, German National Socialist, 78, 83-85
D Duhesne, French General, 346
da Vinci, Leonardo, Italian Ar1ist, 317 Duroselle, Jean-Baptiste, French Historian, 196-197,
Daladier, &louanl, French Politician, 250, 356, 469, 206,209,227,365
472
Dali, Sal\"ador, artist, 21 E
d'Allemont, W'lfe or von Reventlow, TT, 364-366, 379, Ebert, Fredreich, Gem1an Social Democrat, 273-274,
381,38.5, 389, 391-393, 398-401, 400,438,444, 447- 276-278, 297,306,
448, 460-461, 463,479,482,497,610,519,626 &kart, Diellich, Gennan Writer, 67, 172
d'Allemont, French Nobility, 156 Eden, Anthony, British Lord or U1e Privy Seal, 191,
Dankwerts, Bri&h Captain, 226 219, 222-223, 343-344, 358-359, 389,419,426, 441-
INDEX 541
442, 444-446, 447-4i18, il61, 476, fi06.607, 614 Geier, GennanJewish Communist, 63
Edward ID, , King of England, 189
George, David 1.Joyd, British Pri100 Mini3tcr: 166 219
Elschower, Dwight, General, U.S. president, 11, 25 229, 332, 440,613 I I I
Eisner, Kurt, Jewish Communist, 48, 62-63, 174 George, Uoyd, English Politician, 195
Emmanuel, Victor, Italian King, 413 George, Megan, Daughter or Uoyd George, 614
Engcls, Fredrelch, Gennan.Jewish Communist, 429 Gerard, French General, 346
Ernst, Karl, Gennan SA Officer, 383, 405 Gessler, Otto, Gennan Minister of JustJce 276 277I
Enberger, Gem1an Centrist Politician, 60 304 I I
Enberger, Gennan Diplomant, 266 Gibbon.,, American Diplomat, 319-320 :rl2

Esteve, French GeneraJ, 346 Gilles, German Viking Division ~ e r . 376
Exelman,, French General, 346 Gisevius, liB., Gennan Hitler critic, spy' for the
Eyliyohn, ~am, Falsely Alleged to Be Hitler's United States, 367,371,394,405, 408410, 434
Grandfather, 71 Gobineau,JosephArtluuCountof, French Writer, ?.6
Godin, Gennan Police Ueutenant, 291
F Goebbels, Joseph, GentWl Leader, 64, 106, 100, 117,
Fabhis, French.Jewish Prime Minister, 428 122, 16.S, 223,253,268,329,334, 401-40'l, 408,416,
Faud I, Arabian King, 188 610
Faulh.'lber, Gennan Cardinal, 48 Goering. Hennann, German Air Force Commander,
Favre, Jules, French MP, 68 89, 114, l16, 16.S, 223, 24~241, 264,262, 282-283,
Feder, Gottfriend, Gennan Economist, 84 290, 29'l, 301,369, 37'l, 377,384,387, 399400, 404-
Fest, Joachim, Gennan Hi.st.orian, 35, 37, 43, 55, 88-m, 405,410
91, 106-107, 110, 118, 121, 126, 165, 171-172, 193- Goethe, Johann Wolfgang von, Gennan Poet, 26,301
194, 206, 222-223, 228, 246-246, 270, 285 Gontaut-Beran, French Am~, 67
F1andin, Pierre, French President, 184,210,246, 444, Gothein, Gennan.Jewish Communist MP, 54
446, 460 Graf, Ulrich, Gennan National Socialist, 29'l
F1ei.ssner, Gennan.Jewish Communist, 63 Grandi, Ilalian Diplomat, 318
Foch, Ferdinand, French Commander, 49, 167 Gregory Vll, Pope, 189
Ford, Henry, American Industrialist, 138 Groener, \Ytlhelm, Gennan General, 180
Franclin, Pierre, French Premier, 247 Grunewald, Genuan-Jewish Communist, 63
Franco, Francisco, President or Spain, 7, 12, 16, 33, Grylevitch, Soviet-German Double Agent, 481, 483
416, 437,46.S-<166, 468,470, 473,496497, 609,510, Guderian, Heinz, Gennan General, 3i'2, 477,494,497,
616,637 Gurtner, Gennan Doctorate, 416
Francois-Pon<:i?t, French AmbMSador, 69, 124, 199, Guttemwi, Bavarian Separatist, 176
251, 362-365,394-395, 409, 433-434, 604-505, 609,
624 H
Frank, Hans, Tortured National Socialist, 71 Haffner, Sebastian, Jewish fmtorian, 3.5, 76
Frankeireither, Falsely Alleged to Be Hitler's Grand- Hagen, Walter, Gestapo Agent, 48.5-486
father, 72 Halifax, F.clward Wood, British Minister, 444
Frankenberger, Falsely Alleged to Be Hitler's Grand- Hanfstaengl, Helene, New York Socialite, 155also:
father, 72 Hanfstaengl, Helene, \Ylfe or Ernst Han!staengl, 293-
Frederick tlie Great, King or Gennany, l07, 273 294,298
Frick, Waltl1er, Gemlall Minister of tlie Interior, 112, Hanfstaeng~ Ernst, Gennan National Socialist, 293-
117,330, 384,416 294
Froissard, French General, 346 Hanisch, Kart, Jewish associate of Hitler, 36
Fromentein, French General, 346 Hannibal, CartJiaginlan General, 466
Fromm, Friedrich, Gennan General, 181 Hauser, Gemtan Commander or the warren-SS, 376
Fuchs, Bavarian Separatist and University Professor, Hayns, German SA Commander, 392
174-176 Heine, German.Jewish CommWlist, 6t
G Heinz, German Chief of Berlin Police, 383, 385, 392,
Gambetta, Leon, French Politician, 357 402
Gamelin, Maurice, French Chiefoftlie General Stafl', Hel~ Richard, American Journalist, 625
247,424,439-441,446,468,470473,618 Henderson, American Diplomat. 3'23, l30
Garvin, British Newspaper Editor; 441 Henry IV, Gennan Emperor, 189
5-1-2 IIITLEH DEMOCRAT
Hcrrioe, 1-~htoanl, i-n'll<'h Prime Minister, 167, 231· K<X'Stler, Artlmr, American.Jewish Historian, •188
~ Kohn, Gemw1.Jewish Communist, 63
Ht>niOl,, f,)\,nct1 Mini.~t>r, 11:tJ Konlt, Erich, Gcnnru, Oiplomant, 226
lll'SS. Rudolr, Gcnn.1n Sc.x-rctary or State, 155, 218. Kmsuski, French.Jewish Tolde Union Lt>ader, 428
;m,,115 Kroner, Jewish Doctor, 119
1-k~,lrirh. R<'inlt.'U'd. G{•nnan Security SeniC't'S Chit>!, Kuhlcnlhnl, , Gcnnan Diplomat, 472
.aso.-~-186 Kuhlt'S, Bavarinn Sl'parntist and Lawyer, l7•1-176
Hi<'r, Manin, 7..ionist Rabbi, l:}-14 Kuhr, Erich, Gennan National Socialist, 65
llimmll'r, ll<'inrid1, Gcm11111 SS Commander, 155, Kun, Bela, Htmgarian.Jewish Communist, &1
29;3, ,105
llincll'nbtug, Gt>nll.'UI Soldier, Politician, 6-1 L
llil'S('h, Gl'nuan.Jewish Comnumist, &I La Bm,yerc, Andre, French General, 348
Hitler, Adolr, Lt>rulcr of Genn.an,.v. 11assim Lahoussaye, , French General, 346
Ilitll'r, Paula. sistl'r of Adolr Hitler, 25 l...'\loirc, Marcl'I, French Historian, 95, 148
Hitler, Maria. Hillers Gran<hnother, i2 Landauer; Gennan.Jewish Communist, 53
lloaro, SannK'I, British Secretary of Slate, 455 Lannes, French Genernl, 346
l(()('hc, French General, 316 La11sb11rg, Georges, British Labour Party Chair, 212
Hoffmann, Ill'inrich, Gennan Photographer, 282, 296 Latour, Henri, French General, 346
Holher. Albred1t, Gemw, Conmnu1ist, 300 Latsis, Soviet Cheka Agent, 53
Homer, Gret'k Poet, 25 Lavnl, Pierre, Prime Minister of \rachy Fmnce, 7, 12,
Hoover, Herbert, American President, 319-3'22, 337 25, 227, 234, 236-237, 239, 2•11, 246, 425, •M3, 450,
Horace, Greek Poet, 25 466
llugenberg. Gentwt Conservative Leader, 90, 108, kbnm, Albert, French President, 356-357, 1198
110.~2 Lefevre, Duchess or Danzig, 3'18
Hughes, Charles&~ U.S. Secretary of State, 165 Leger, Alexis, French Foreign Miruster, 361,469
Lenin, llyich Ulanov, Russian kader, 31-32, 62, 61,
I 65, li9,233,260, 274, 288,337,350,426, 476
ldeJon, Ztus Alduide, Zionist Assassin, 13 Levine, Eugene, Jewish Conummist, 62-53, 62, 1126
leg<)\', NKVD Chief, 4SI Levinsohn, Gennan~Jewish Communist, 53
Lcwien, Jewish Communist, 62-53, 426
J Uebknccht, Karl, Gennan.Jewish Communist, 48, 51-
Jacobsen, Dorothea, Wife oh-on U>SSOW, 277 6-1, l i9, 27•1-275, 309, 426
Jeschov, GPU Agent, 481 Ulenthal, Gennan.Jcwish Conummist, 53
Jesus Christ, 25 Uncoln, 'Irebitch, Jewish Coup Plotter, 74
Jetzinger, Communist ex-priest, 72 Upinsky, Gennan.Jewish Communist, 63
Joffre, , French General, 229 Up1>, Gennan.Jewish Conummist, 63
Josef, Franz, Emperor or Austria, ?.8 Little, British Admiral, 226
Jourdan, French General, 3'15 Litvinov-Mallakt, Maksim, Sovil't.Jewish Foreign
JOU\-enel, Bertrand, French Diplomat, 248-251 Minister, 232-233, 235,322, 447
Julian the Apostate, Roman, 25 Lochan, British Politician, 4i9
Jwtg, Rudolf, Gennan Writer, 160 Londondeny, British Air Secretary, 611
JWlg. F.dgard. Gennan Communist Writer, 397,405 Loret, French General, 346
JWIOt, French General, 3-16 Lothian, British Lord, 219,360, 441
Loucheur, French Minister, 237
K Louis XIV, King of France, 99, 164, UM, 424
~ German Priest, 91, 1ll LudendorfT, Eric, General, 33, 47, 77, 167-158, 171,
Kapp, Wolfgang, Half.Jewish Coup Plotter, 74, 267, 229, 270-271, 281-282, 2&1·288, 290-29'l, 300-302,
2i4,309 30 1, 306-307, 3'19, 36.9, 387
1
Ke)nes. John Maynanl, British Economist, 60 Lustiger, French.Jewish Archbi.shop, 428

Khruschev. Nikolai, So,ict Premier, 489 Luther, Martin, Gennan Priest, 25, 264
Kidedin, Gennan Naval Officer, 226 Lulher, Hans, Gennan Reichsbnnk President, 134
KlatL<.ener, Erich, Von Papen's Right lland Man, 405 Luxembourg, Rosa, Gennan.Jewish Conumutist, 48,
JOotz,Jew,sh-French Futance Minister, 74 62--54, 179, 426
INDEX 543
M Nollet, French General, 314

MacDon,1ld, Ramsey, British Pl\11 247,337,344 Noskc, Gw;tav, Gcnnan Anti-Commtmi.st Leader, 52
Machlums, Bavarian Separatist, 174-176 - Gennan Cabinet Minisler, 7•1
Maknrt, Hans, Artist, 27 - Gennan Socialist, 89
Malet, French Gen<'ral, •108
Mallet, Alfred, French Historian, 236 0
Malmux, Pierre, French Minister, 187 O'Connor, Sixtus, American Torturer, 72
Mangin, Charles, French General, 1&5 Oudinot, French General, 345
Marie Jose, Wife of the Prince of Italy, 507 Oumansky, R~1 Diplomat. 236
Markus, Gcnnan.Jcwish Communist, 53 Ovid, Roman Poet, 25
Marx, Karl, Gennan.Jewish Communist, 410,429 Owens, Jesse, American-Negro Atlllete, 507
Maser, Wemer, Historian, 26, 39, 72-7'J, 130,259
Mass<>na, French General, 3:llh3-18 p
Masser, Wemcr, GC'nnan Historian, 156-157, 160 Parcus, Masson, Gennan.Jewlsh Flnancier, 200
M~igli, Italian Foreign l\linister, 462 Passaquay, French, Grandfather of Himmlcr, 155
Mastny, Czech A111b~dor to Berlin, '182 Paul-Boncour, Joseph, French Prime Minister, 215,
Maurice, Frederick, British Gen<.>ral, 48 '168-469
Maurin, French Minister of War, 439 Pavlov, Ivan, Soviet Psychologist, 22
Mayer, llelene, Gennan.Jewish Athlete, ffJ7 Peiper, Joaquin, Gcnllllll Tank Commander, 376
Mayr, Karl, Gennan Captain, 80-81, &I Petain, Philippe, 7, 2.39, 4'i'.?473
Meissner, Hans Otto, Gen nan Secretary of State, 133 Peter the Great. Emperor or Ru~ia, 11
Mend, llans, Friend of Hitler, 3'.? Petit, French General, 3:15
Menelik, King of Ethiopia, •154 Petz, Fredrich, Gennan General, 35
Mengcle, Josef, Doctor, 14 Pfordt, Fritz, French Communist, 201,203
Meyer, Kurt, "Gennan Commander of Panzer Divi· Phillip II, French King, 21 I
sion Hitlerjugend, 377 Phipps, Eric, British Ambl\$lldor to Gennaey, 193,
Milford, Unity, British Lady, 150 221,223,343
Moch, French.Jewish Communist, 428 Piatakov, Soviet Diplomat, 476
Moliere, French Playwright. 317 Pietri, Francois, French Minister of the Navy, 439
Molotov, Vyacheslav, Russian Foreign Minister, 237 Pilsuclsld, J6zef, Polish General, 240
Molt kc, Gcnnan General, 229 Plato, Greek Philosopher, 26
Momsen, General, 26 Poincare, Raymond, French President, 60, 75, 90,
Montague, Collet Nonnan, British.Jewish Head of 102-168, 170, 17'J, 17~170, 186,229,2i9,313,32l,
The Bank of England, 430 43'1, -141
Morgcnthau, Henry, American.Jewish Cabinet Mem- Politis, Greek Diplomat, 332
ber, 428 Popp, Josef, Hitlers Lan<Uord, 33
Moua, Gitl.5eppe, Swiss Diplomat, 235 Potemkin, Grigory, Soviet Ambassador, 236
Murat, Joachim-Napoleon, French General, 3-15-346 Pres.wd, French Prosecutor, 354
Mussolini, Benito, Prime l\liniSter of Italy, 7, 9, 189, Pricce, Andrew, British Joumalist. 38
212, 2'28, 3:14, 350,300,413,424, -161-159, 461-163, Price, Ward, British Journalist, 303, 626
470,506-507 Puyi, Japanese Prince, 188
Myron of EleutJ1erae, Greek Artist, 27
R
N Radek, Karl, So\iet Military Leader, 274
Napoleon III, Emperor of France, 107 Raeder, Erich, Gcnna11 Admiral, 416, 490
Napoleon, Louis, Brother of Napoleon Bonaparte, Raffet, French General, 3-18
3.JO RMkolnikov, SovielAn1bas.5ador, 476,486
NeitJlllrdt, Gem1an Judge, 3@304 Ratl1e1lllu, Walter, Gemllllhlewish Foreign Minister,
Nelson, Horatio, British Admiral, 218 54,266
Ney, French General, 3-17-3-18 Raud, Paris Newspaper Editor, 455
Niemoeller, Martin, Gen11an Communist Pastor, 333 Rauel, French General, 3-16
Nicts2scl1e, Friedrich, Gennan Philosopher, 26 Reagan, Ronald, US. President, 143
N0<U11y, Gennan Diplom,,nt. 322 Rebquodot, French General, ~
R<'i(il('nau, Walthenon, Gennan Gcncrnl, 182, 371, Schikelgmber, Maria, Falsely Alleged to Be llilJer's
416 GrandmolJ1er, 72
R<'illl', 1-rench GcncraJ, 346 Schiller, Johann Christoph Friedrich von, Gennan
R<'nan, Writer, 26 Poet, 26, 159
R<'nondot, French General and Diplomat, 361 Schl.1geter, Albert Leo, Gem1an Freikorps S.1botcur,
RcnoU\in, Pi<"rro, 1-'rench H~orian, 185, 191-19'2, 200- 174
207,228.445, 473 Schleicher, Wife of General Schleicher, 363, 406
Richert, French Major/Intelligence Agent, 174-175 Schlemper, German Jesuit, 406
Richlicu. French Cardinal, 165 Sclunid, Willi, German Doctor, <106
RiefCMtahl, Lau, Gennan F\Immaker, 608,518 Schmidt, Paul, Am~or to Gennany, 510,623
Robespierre, Maximilien ~ i s Marie Isidore de, Schmidt, \Villi, Gennan SA Man, 406
French Revolutionary, 27 Schopenhauer, Arthur, Gennan Philosopher, 26
Roehm, Ernst, Gennan SA Commander, 158, 263, Schroeder, Ludwig von, Gennan Grand Admiral, 77
268-269, 27'l, 29'l-293, 346, 348-351, 36-1-365, 368- Schultz, Walther, Gennan Doctor, 292
375, 377-383, 385-897, 402-404, 409-411, 419,449, Schuster, Kart-Oeorg, Gem1an Admiral, 226
613 Selassie, Haile, King of Ethiopia, 454-455, 460
Romme1, Erwin, Gennan General, 372, 499 Seldte, Franz, Gennan Official, 415
Roose\-clt, Franklin, President of United States, 10, Semenev, Soviet Diplomat, 479
26, 100, 186, 188-190, 350, 547 Shakespeare, Willian1, English Playwright, 26
Rosenberg, Alfred, German Philosopher, 165, 283, Simon, John, British Foreign Minister, 219-224, 246-
29.j 246, 343, 358
RosenfeUd, Oreste, French Newspaper F.dltor, 428 Skobline, Nicholas, Double Agent, 480
Rothschild, British-Jewish Banker, 467 Smigly-Ridz, Edward, Polish General, 471
Rothschild-Mandel, Jeroboam, French War Minister, Smith, Truman, U.S. Military Attache, 69
354 Snowden, Philip, British Lord, 443
Ruef!', Jacques, French Treasurer, 430 Soissons, Pierre, French historian, 54, 67, 59, '11J5, 303
Ruith, Gennan General, 271 Sokolin, R~ian Diplomat, 236
Rundstedt, Gent von, Gennan Minister of War, 471 Sophocles, Greek Playwright, 26
Rupprecht, Bavarian Prince, 113, 174,281,288 Sopn\l\5i, Son of Berthier's Mistress, 347
Rust, Gennan Doctor, 415 Sorel, Writer, 26
Rykov, Soviet General, 483 Sotelo, Calvo, Spanish Fa5<:ist, 465
Souvitch, Italian Diplomat, 329
s Spatny, Walter, Gem1an Colonel, 35
Saint Cyr, Gouvion, French General, 345 Speer, Albert, Gennan Official, 130-131
Saint Vallier, French Diplomat, 57 St Clair, Archibald, British Liberal Leader, 213
Salan, French General, 'l1J7 Stalin, Josef, President of the Soviet Union, 10, 17,
Samsonov, Rmsian General, 416 157,184, 188,232, 236-238, 240-241, 247,260,337,
Sanaut, Maurice, French PM, 438-441, 443 349-351, 450, 466467, 474-481, 483-484, 487-490,
Sarrami, French General, 346 616,547
Sauerwein, Jules, French Journalist, 245,526 Stavisky, French Jewish Organized Crime F,gure,
Savanarola, Girolamo, Spanish Priest, 26 353-354
Savarin, Brillat, French Historian, 346 Steiner, Felix, German Commander of the Fowth Ar·
Scapini, French Deputy, 250 mored Corps, 376
Schacht, ma1mer, German F.conomist, 62, 54-65, 61, Stimson, Heruy, American Secretary of State, 332
127, 131-137,333, 392, 410,414-416, 430-431, 435, Strasser, Gregor, Gennan National Socialist, 363, 390,
471 395-396, 398, 405
Schamhorst, Gerhard von, German General, 373 Strauss, Richard, Gennan Compooer, 159, 507
Scheidemann, German.Jewish Communist Prime Streicher, Julius, Gennan Publisher, 67,260,290,364,
Minister, 51,309 Streseman, Gustav, Gennan Conservative Leader, 52,
Scheidenwm, German Politician, 266 64, 57-68, 60-61, 73, 120, 164, 167, 176, 275-276,
Schellenberg, Walter, Gennan Counter-Intelligence 297-'11J8,304,306,314,349
Ouef,485 Suchet, French General, 346
Scherer, French General, 346
INDEX 545
T von Hammerstein, Gennan General, 108, 180,486

Tabouis, Genevieve, Frend, Journalist, 201-202, 241, von Ilclldorf, Gem1an Captain and Interpreter, 49
332-333, 355-3.">6, 361 von Ilindenburg. Oskar, Gennan Presklcnt, 48--19, 63,
Tacit.us, Roman Historian, 25 100, 102, 105-109, 112, 114-117, 180-181, ~J,270,
Taffrui, E1hioJ)ian General, 466 314, 3'23, 331,336,363,382,395,397,409, 1113-420
TaiUingcr, French Mayor of Paris, 247 von Hohenlohe, Stepl1anic, Gennan Princess, 156
Tanlieu, Andre, French Prime Minister, 195 von Kahr, Gustav Riller, Gcnnan Commissioner-Gen-
Tanlieu, French Minist.er,318 eral, 171,268, 270..272, 270-286, 288-?.89, 2SH-295,
Taxis, Gennan, 63 302,396
Thiers, Adolphe, President of France, 67 von Knilling, Eugene, Gem1an fu>sidcnt or Bavaria,
Thillier, French Historian, 200 268,277
TI1orez, Maurice, French Communist, 422,468 von ~tcin, Kress, Gem1an General, 271,278
Tiiys.scn, Fritz. Gen nan lndust rialist, 167 von Krosich,, Genrum Diplomat, 132
Tirard, Paula, French Ruhr Commander, 167
von Krosigk, Schwerin, Gennan Count, 112, 415
Titus Livius, Roman, 25
von Lossow, Otto, Gem1an General, 268, 270..272,
Toilet, Gennan.Jewish Communist, 63
277-280, 28'2-28.5, 288-?.89, 292, 294, 302-303
Toland, John, British Historian, 38, 45, 48, 60, 70, 291-
VOii LudendortT, Marguerite, \Vife of General ,-on Lu-
292, 301, 607-508
dendortT, 281
Toynbee, Amold, British Historian, 616
TrauuuannsdortT, Gennan Bureaucrat, 482-183 von Luttwit2, , Coup Plotter, 74, 267, 274
von MackeMen,, Gemtan General, 222,416
Tubeuf, Anton, Gennan Colonel, 35
1\1cholsky, Kurt, Leftist, 126 von Mueller, Karl Alexander, Professor at Universi~
1\1khachevsl<y, Mikhail, Soviet General, 189, 2.12-233, or Munich, 80-81, 284
237,247,274,474, 475-481, 48-1-190, 516 von Neurath, Constantin, Gennru1 Politician, 108,
1\mck, French General, 346 112, 132,221, 323-324, ~. 416,435
'fyreU, British Lord, 207 von Papen, Frnnz, Gemtan Chancellor, 100, 105, 108,
110..116, 162, 171, ~'36, 39'l, 397-398, 405, 414-116
u von Reventlow, Genn,'lll Count, 77
lnll, Gemuu1 SA Officer, 40.5 von Rheinbaben, Gennru1 Undersecretary, 266
Ulmanis, Gem1an.Jewish Communist, 63 von Rheinbaben, Gcnnan Secretary of State, $'3
von Ribbentrop, Gennan Foreign Minister, 219, ~
V 226,260,447448,610
van den Bnick, Moeller, Gennan Author, 298 von Richlofen, Manfred, Gennru, A,iator, 263
Van Zeeland, Belgian Prime Minister, 4•1>1 von Scl1eubner-Richter, Max Erwin, Genn,111 National
Vandamme, French General, 3'16 Socialist, 271, 283-28,1, 292,298
Vansitart, Robert, British Anti-fascist, 455, 611 von Scheubner-Richter, Wife of National Socialist,
Verdier, French Cardinal, •166 293,298
Vem1eer, Jan or Johrum, Artist, 158 von Schirach, Baldur von, Gem\31\ National Socialist.
Vie1met, Jeru1, French Politician, 300 16.5, 254
Vieru1ot, , French Politician, 361 von Schleicher, Kurt, Gennan Chancellor, 100, 105,
Viviani, , French Prime Minister, 437 180, 362-363, 390, 39-1~. 40-l-400, 408-110
von Beethoven, Ludwig, Gemi.'lll Composer, 168 von Sclmsnigg, Kurt, Austrian Chruicellor, 183-18-1
von Bissig, Gem1ru1 Count, 100 von Seecl<t, Wilhelm, Reicl~wehr General, 74, 170,
von Blomberg, Werner, Gennan General, 181, 386- 275, 277, 388, 486
387,391, 416, 43'1-435, 437 von Seidlitz, Gertrude, Flnnish Industrialist, 155
von Borsig, Ernst, Gennan Industrialist, 77, 167 VOil Seisser, Hans, Gennru1 Police Chief, 268, 270,
von Bose, Herbert, Von Papen's Secretary, 405 278, 28.1-28.5, 302
VOil Eltz, Gennan Official, 416
\'On Shirach, Baldur, Gem1an National Socialist, 109
von E1>1>, Franz Riller, Gennan Commissioner of the VOil Staufenbcrg, Claus, Gennan ~ l l , 37
Reich, I 1-1, 168, 29'.? von Stum, Gennan Prince, 63
von Fritsch, Gen11ru1 Anny Chief of Staff, 416, 496 von 1\irpitz. Alfred, Gennan Admiral, 160
von GocUn, Michael Fciherr, Gemw, General, 35
Voronoff, Serge, Russian Doctor, 357
von Hainhau.sen, Daniel, Genuan Undersccretary, 171
546 HITLER DEMOCRAT
w
Wagnt'r, Ridw,l, Gmnan Composer, 26-27. 65, 12'l,
16.\ l'i'J,299,~,401-402,416
'\\~N', C-OSima, Daughter of Richard Wagner, 166
Wagner, Winifred, Richard Wagner's Daughter-in-law,
291,299
Wallffl.5tein, Getman, 25
Wasmer, C'.emW\ Naval Officer, ZlG
Weill, German-Jewish Composer, 65
Weist'.nthal, Simon. Zionist, 14
Wcl-..s, Jacki, Gem\al\ Soldier, 45
Wellington. Fleld Marshal Arthur Wellesley, 1st Duke
or, British General, Lord, 218
West.carp. Gennan Countess, 63
Weygand, French General, 47'.3, 476
Wiedemann, "German Lieutenant, Hitler's command-
ing officer,• 46
Wilhehn II, Kaiser or Germ&J\Y, 45, 60, 98, 107, 218,
413.495
William. Shirer, American Historian, 406, 437, 460
Wilhelm I, Geiman ~ r , 273
Wilson, Woodrow, U.S. President, 16, 57-68, 165, 3'l5
Woernwm, German Diplomat, 2'l6
y
Yegorov, Soviet General, 477-478
z
1,eller, French C.Ommunist, 473
Zetkin, German-Jewish Commwust, 54
7.insheimer,, GennanJewish Commwust MP, 63
CPSIA WOllllllioa- be oblaincd 1t www.lCGICSling.-
Prillled ia the USA
BVO\l.'021301190912
300792BVOOOOSB/5/P 9 ~JIJJ ,JJIJl

Léon Degrelle - Hitler Democrat-The Barnes Review (2012)

Uploaded by

Document Information

Original Title

Copyright

Available Formats

Share this document

Share or Embed Document

Sharing Options

Did you find this document useful?

Is this content inappropriate?

Copyright:

Available Formats

Léon Degrelle - Hitler Democrat-The Barnes Review (2012)

Uploaded by

Copyright:

Available Formats

978-1-937787-11 - 0 Manufactured in the U.S.A.

rool THE BARNES REVIEW

This collection of the writings of the late General Leon Degrelle

THE BARNES REVIEW

INTRODUCTION: Leon Degrelle-Warrior for the West .................... 7

CHAPTER 20: Plebiscite in the Saarland .......................................... 191

CHAPTER 44: The Challenge to French Marxism ............................ 423

Here is the inspiring yet tragic story of an idealistic, in-

eon Degrelle died in Malaga, Spain on April 1, 1994 at the age of

the ,vorld, in addition to the efforts of U.S. President Franklin Roosevelt

anns and suffered the same wounds.

his colleague, Rabbi Abrahrun Cooper, both leaders of a very profitable

riod on an anlbitious project that would be his crowning triumph as a pro-

the hostile rule of alien neighboring countries.

pected that the forthco1ning volumes would also be equally popular.

Dear General Degrelle:

him so many times before. Communist bullets, flame-throwers, grenades,

THE ENIGMA OF HITlER

itler-you knew him-what was he like?" I have

'' been asked that question a thousand times since

two million people at the Tempelhof airfield. Then he became as if trans-

prehension. He had a deep knowledge and understanding of Buddha,

placed his n1other's photograph in front of him.

Without it tl1ere could never have been a Hitler era.

THE UNKNOWN SOLDIER

n August 1914 the unlmown artist would become the unlmown

Freely with open heart we are waiting for you.

Hitler lived in Munich on Schleisshimerstrasse, not far from Num-

would one day clash in the greatest war in history.

As their transport train passed the great statue of Germania on the

He was always ready to help out in any situation, always vol-

these forces were to protect Hitler all his life.

Even Joachim Fest was struck by the strangeness of Hitler's immunity:

Often in tlle night.s of bitterness/ I see the oak of Wotan sur-

Hitler historian Werner Maser has described them:

The buildings, perceived horizontally, are striking in their lu-

England's own great artist Edward Gordon Craig is no less laudatory:

lESSONS FROM THE FRONT

rom 1914 to 1919, the front would become Hitler's second

in order to achieve anything. This is the crux of an hnmense social

to supplement their starvation rations with rats they caught in the

subversives such as the Llebknechts, the Luxemburgs, and the Eisners.

the "rivers of German blood."

itler would perhaps one day be "the most prodigious force

Even the most craven Weimar politicians denounced the Jewish

This area is crawling with the foulest elements, presenting

Such official declarations would mobilize all the Jewish lobbies if

n July 28, 1919 the Versailles Treaty fell like a bomb on 60

reparations based on article 231, by which Gennany was to admit total

SEVEN AND AHAlF MARKS

itler went to the Altes Rosenbad coffeehouse at Herrn-

st:arnps, so he delivered tl1e invitations door to door and distributed some

would retake control of the streets from the Jewish-financed Communist

he Hojbrauhaus success would sever the last link holding

was in touch with his people as if by antennas."

tllis muazing confession, which named the Jew in question as a certain

forces, a fact known but unpublicized by Establishment historians. All

HITlER'S THREE CHANCES

o many plans were going through my head. I thought

page or nvo in public. Gennany especially had always lacked orators.

part of our people, this repugnance is generally not based on

Hitler concluded that emotional reactions led to pogroms, whereas a

1~1~!"- 1!1ad¥:.h~~r·,c~J$ ,. ., l:~!Jit;